Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Private Bills [Lords] (Standing Orders not previously inquired into complied with),—Mr. Speaker laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, namely:—

Sheringham Gas and Water Bill [Lords].

Falmouth Docks Bill [Lords].

Poole Corporation [Lords].

Newark Gas Bill [Lords].

Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time.

Provisional Order Bills (no Standing Orders applicable),—Mr. Speaker laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, referred on the First Reading thereof, no Standing Orders are applicable, namely:—

Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders Bill.

Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time To-morrow.

Stretford Urban District Council Bill, Read the third time, and passed.

Local Government, (Ireland) Provisional Orders Bill,
To confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board for Ire land relating to the county borough of Cork and the urban district of Dungarvan," presented by Mr. MACPHERSON: road the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 99.]

Commons Regulation (Coity Wallia) Provisional Order Bill,
To confirm a Provisional Order under the Inclosure Acts, 1845–99, relating to Coity Wallia Commons, in the county of Glamorgan," and for purposes incidental thereto," presented by Sir ARTHUR GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN; read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 100.]

Local Government Provisional Order (No. 4) Bill,
To confirm a Provisional Order of the Local Government. Board relating to the counties of Chester and Lancaster," presented by Major Astor; read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 101.]

Local Government Provisional Order (No. 5) Bill,
To confirm a Provisional Order of the Local Government Board relating to Lowestoft," presented by Major ASTOR; read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 102.]

Local Government Provisional Order (No. 6) Bill,
To confirm a Provisional Order of the Local Government Board relating to the district of the Southport, Birkdale, and West Lancashire Water Board," presented by Major Astor; read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 103.]

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 7) Bill,
To confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board relating to Morley and the Middlesex District Joint Small-pox Hospital District, presented by Major Astor; read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 104.]

CIVIL SERVICES (SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1919–20).

Estimate presented of the further Sum required to be voted for the service of the year ending 31st March, 1920, [by Command]; referred to a Standing Committee, and to be printed. [No. 112.]

Oral Answers to Questions — RUSSIA.

SIBERIA (CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY).

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: 1.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether a Constituent Assembly Las been elected for Siberia; whether it has met and for how long; whether it has met this year; and if he can state what parties the members are divided into and what is the numerical strength of the various parties?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Cecil Harmsworth): The all Russia Constituent Assembly, of which Siberian delegates formed a part, was dispersed by the Bolshevists in January, 1918. No separate Siberian Constituent Assembly has since been elected. The last part of the question therefore does not arise.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Are any steps being taken to call it together again?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I should like notice of that question.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is it not a fact that it was called together again and dissolved by Koltchak?

EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.

Mr. LUNN: 2.
asked whether the Foreign Office proposes to publish an account of the educational system established by the Russian Soviet Government?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: The answer to the hon. Member's question is in the negative.

FOOD SUPPLIES (DR. NANSEN'S PROPOSAL).

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 4.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether Dr. Nansen's proposal to feed Russia was communicated to Admiral Koltchak; and, if so, what was the nature of Admiral Koltchak's reply?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: His Majesty's Government have no knowledge of any communication being addressed to Admiral Koltchak on the subject of Dr. Nansen's proposal. The second part of the question, therefore, does not arise.

FOOD SUPPLIES.

Mr. LUNN: 45.
asked the Prime Minister whether, before the Russian Soviet Government had replied to the Nansen proposals, these proposals had already been refused by any other Governments in the territory of the former Russian Empire; if so, what were the reasons given for their refusal; and whether any further progress has been made in the negotiations for the feeding of Russia through a neutral commission?

Mr. BONAR LAW (Leader of the House): The answer to the first part of the hon. Member's question is in the negative, the second part does not, therefore, arise. It is, however, the case that on the day before the Soviet Government replied, a warning was received from the Russian Political Conference in Paris to the effect that the revictualling of Russia should be independent of all Bolshevik influences. His Majesty's Government are not aware that any further progress has been made in the negotiations for the feeding of Russia through a neutral commission.

RUSSIAN OFFICERS IN ENGLAND.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: (by private Notice) asked the Prime Minister whether he has seen the translation of a document which is being sent to Russian officers in England who are now being called up by Admiral Koltchak in these terms: "General-Lieutenant Ermoloff asks you urgently to communicate with him if you wish to be introduced to Her Majesty the Empress Marie Fedorovna. The introduction will take place on a date and at an hour which will be fixed by the Prince Dolgoruki, who is in attendance on Her Majesty"; whether such a document does not indicate that Admiral Koltchak is fighting for the restoration of Czarism, and is this the policy of His Majesty's Government in supporting that officer?

Mr. BONAR LAW: My hon. and gallant Friend has furnished me with a copy of the document referred to, which I had not previously seen. There appears to be no sufficient reason why Russian officers now in England who had previously served in the Imperial Army should not, if they so desire, be introduced to the ex-Empress during her brief stay in this country, and I am unable to trace any connection between such an act of courtesy and the policy of Admiral Koltchak.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that if these officers are asked to meet the Empress it means that they are to be brought into the Royalist schemes? [HON. MEMBERS: "No."]

Mr. STAN TON: They are as much entitled as you are with your schemes.

Mr. BONAR LAW: I think my hon. and gallant Friend's inferences are very far fetched indeed.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: We will see about that.

Oral Answers to Questions — COMMERCIAL TREATIES.

Mr. RENWICK: 3.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether commercial treaties have been entered into with Italy, France, and Japan, or any of them, since the commencement of the War; if so, when is it proposed to publish such treaties, and will facilities be given at an early date for the House to discuss them; and, if no treaties have been concluded, will the Government arrange that the details of any proposed commercial treaties shall be discussed by the House before they are concluded?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: No commercial treaties have been concluded with Italy, France, or Japan since the outbreak of War, and it is not proposed to do so now. The rest of the question therefore does not arise. There have, of course been constant negotiations during the War between His Majesty's Government and the three Governments mentioned on commercial matters arising out of the blockade and import and export restrictions.

Oral Answers to Questions — CHANNEL ISLANDS (PASSPORTS).

Mr. JOHN MURRAY: 5.
asked the Secretary for Foreign Affairs whether he will consider the advisability of dispensing with passports in the case of persons of British nationality proceeding to the Channel Islands and no farther?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I understand from the Secretary of State for the Home Department that it is hoped that circumstances will permit of this dispensation in two or three months' time.

Oral Answers to Questions — POLAND (MASSACRES OF JEWS).

Mr. CHARLES EDWARDS: 6.
asked the Secretary for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware of the massacre of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children in Poland and Lithuania, perpetrated by the new Polish army and instigated by the Government of the new Polish State; and whether he will intervene so as to prevent any further massacres of these people?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I would refer the hon. Member to my reply of the 15th May to the hon. Member for Whitechapel, and to my reply of the 20th May to the hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme. A detailed report has been called for from His Majesty's representative in Warsaw, but has not yet been received.

Oral Answers to Questions — VENEREAL DISEASE.

Sir THOMAS BRAMSDON: 8.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether venereal disease is spreading rapidly amongst the British troops in Germany now they have left the trenches and gone to billets in towns and villages there; that troops returning to England show a greater incidence of venereal disease than troops at home; that diseased German prostitutes abound in the occupied areas and convey infection to many of our troops there; and what effectual measures are being taken to protect British troops from such disease?

The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Churchill): A Report has been called for on this matter, and I will communicate with my hon. Friend later.

Oral Answers to Questions — AERODROME CONTRACTORS (MOTOR LORRY).

Mr. HUGH MORRISON: 9.
asked the Secretary for War whether he is aware that, in spite of the representations of the Salisbury Rural District Council to the road transport officer of the Southern Command, the Royal Air Force are using a three-ton motor lorry for the purpose of conveying about four persons each day from Winterslow to Lopcombe Corner Aerodrome, and that in consequence considerable damage is being done to the
reads in the district by this unnecessary heavy military traffic; and will he take steps to stop this waste of money?

Mr. CHURCHILL: The lorry in question belongs to the contractors working at Lopcombe Corner Aerodrome, and is used for the conveyance of stores and workmen to and from the station. There are generally about sixteen men, while the stores consist mainly of drain pipes, for which a conveyance of this kind is necessary.

Oral Answers to Questions — DEMOBILISATION.

PRIORITY OF RELEASE.

Mr. MARRIOTT: 10.
asked the Secretary for War whether representations have been made by the Ministry of Labour as to the advisability of releasing from the Army men who have a definite prospect of employment in civil life in priority to those who have not; and, if so, whether he is acting upon the representation?

Mr. CHURCHILL: No representations as suggested by my hon. Friend have been made, but the advisability of such action has always been recognised by the two Departments. The policy of giving to men who have a definite promise of employment awaiting them priority of release over those who have no such promise was, with the concurrence of the Ministry of Labour, adopted as one of the main principles of the scheme of demobilisation and has been acted upon throughout.

EASTERN FORCES.

Lieut.-Colonel WALTER GUINNESS: 24.
asked the Secretary for War whether the demobilisation of men now serving in Egypt who joined the Army in 1914 and 1915 is being considerably delayed by the decision to grant leave each month to about 5,000 men who joined only in 1916; and whether, in. view of the dissatisfaction thus caused to the men who went through the early stages of the War without any opportunity for leave, he will consider the advisability of limiting the allotment of leave for the 1916 men to cases of urgent compassionate grounds, transferring the passages thus saved to the 1914 and 1915 men eligible for demobilisation?

Mr. CHURCHILL: Instructions have been given to the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Egyptian Expeditionary Force, to divide available shipping accom-
modation between demobilisable men and retainable men who are eligible for leave, and the proportion must be left to his discretion. It is considered that unless a certain amount of leave is granted to soldiers who are retained in accordance with the procedure laid down in Army Order 55 of 1919, their situation will shortly, by virtue of length of service approximate to that of the 1914–15 men, as they may in many cases have to wait till the Regular unit of the after-war Army arrive during this trooping season.

Mr. LYLE: 28.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the fact that in certain countries the process of demobilisation is necessarily suspended for the moment and demobilised men on their way home are asked to remain for the time being, he is taking adequate steps to explain to all ranks concerned the reasons for this inevitable postponement of their return home; and whether, in particular, he will pay attention to Egypt and India, where men have been from three to five years without leave?

Mr. SITCH: 34.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether discontent exists among the troops in India on the question of demobilisation; whether, although no volunteers were found at Deolali, the authorities at Simla issued a statement that 4,807 men had volunteered; and whether he will take early steps to allay the unrest?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I am informed that during the month of April reports from India indicated a certain discontent owing to retarded demobilisation, and in consequence it was arranged to continue demobilisation through the hot weather. It was, however, temporarily suspended later, owing to trouble on the North-West Frontier. I am informed that the Commander-in-Chief in India reports that soldiers awaiting embarkation for the United Kingdom at Karachi and Deolali depots were invited by him to volunteer to remain in India, in view of the situation in that country, and that all at Deolali, including details from Mesopotamia, have unconditionally volunteered. He had, however, not received reports from Karachi. He adds that as soon as the situation admits, men will be released and dispatched homewards as shipping becomes available. From this report it is evident that the situation must have been explained or the men would not have volunteered to remain. With regard to
Egypt, I am informed that 1914 and 1915 men are being dispatched approximately as follows:

1914 men
…
14,000 in May, and 12,000 in June.


1915 men
…
12,000 in June, and 18,000 in July.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: Does that apply to Mesopotamia men as well, when the right hon. Gentleman says India?

Mr. CHURCHILL: No. India is India, and the rest of my answer dealt with Egypt.

Mr. HOGGE: Can the right hon. Gentleman give the numbers of 1915 men, or are there any others?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I cannot be quite sure, but the numbers are very large. Twenty-six thousand men are coming from Egypt alone in May and June—these are 1914 men—and there are 30,000 of the 1915 men coming in June and July. The House will see what a tremendous business this is to be.

Mr. HOGGE: Is it arranged that the 1915 men will not come before the 1914 men have all gone?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I am sure that that is the intention. There may be special reasons in certain cases to prevent it.

Mr. HURD: What is the method of selection?

Mr. CHURCHILL: There are certain elaborate rules for guidance as to the order of priority of release in any class. One is the length of time of service; the next is the prospect of employment here; but as a very large number is being relieved, obviously no great difficulty can arise on that.

ROYAL ARMY SERVICE CORPS.

Mr. HURD: 25.
asked the Secretary for War whether he is aware that Members of Parliament are being informed by soldiers in the Army of Occupation that mechanical transport men in the Royal Army Service Corps are not being demobilised fairly according to length of service; that men are being retained solely because their unit is in general headquarters troops, and that men from other mechanical transport units are being demobilised with less service than men in such general headquarters units; and what steps he proposes to take?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I have no knowledge of this, but inquiries are being made and I will write to my hon. Friend as soon as possible.

APPLICATIONS FOR RELEASE.

Mr. BOWERMAN: 36.
asked the Secretary of State for War if he will consider the case of P. Steel, No. 200446, B Company, 18th Battalion, Rifle Brigade, nearly sixty years of age, who on the outbreak of War joined the National Reserve and volunteered for foreign service twelve months later, was sent to Burma, then to the Andaman Islands, and is now in Rangoon; and whether, as several younger men of the battalion have been sent home, Steel's desire to be released can be acceded to?

Mr. CHURCHILL: Inquiries will be made in this case and I will inform my hon. Friend of the result as early as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions — SOLDIERS UNIDENTIFIED.

Sir T. BRAMSDON: 14.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether there are any and, if so, how many British soldiers now on the Continent or on other foreign service who, owing to their mental condition and in consequence of the War, have not been able to say who they are, and are consequently not identified; and, if so, whether he will consider the advisability of having their photographs taken and circulated?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I am informed that there are no such cases. The man referred to in the reply given to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Anglesey on the 5th May has now been brought home. As regards the last part of the question, I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply just mentioned. Experience has shown the suggestion to be impracticable.

Oral Answers to Questions — MANCHESTER REGIMENT (PRIVATE A. W. WHITTAKER).

Lieut.-Colonel DALRYMPLE-WHITE: 15.
asked the Secretary of State for War if the presumed death in action of Private Arnold D. Whittaker, No. 250927, l/6th Manchester Regiment, who was reported as wounded and missing on 25th March, 1918, cannot" now be officially con-firmed; whether he is aware that this man's father has repeatedly written to the
War Office on the subject without receiving a reply; and what is the cause of the delay in this case and similar cases?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I am informed that Private Whittaker was reported wounded and missing on 25th March, 1918, but death has not been presumed officially owing to certain evidence having been submitted showing that he was killed. This evidence, which has been under examination, has now been verified. The death of the man is accordingly being accepted, and the next-of-kin will in due course receive the usual formal notice. The delay in notifying Private Whittaker's father is regretted. It was due, I understand, to the receipt of a large mass of information giving details as to the fate of many soldiers, and all of this required careful examination and consequent investigation.

Oral Answers to Questions — VICTORY MARCHES (PROVINCES).

Mr. RENWICK: 21.
asked whether the Government is now in a position to name the date when the victory marches of troops will take place in the large provincial centres on similar lines to those which have already taken place and others arranged for in London?

Mr. CHURCHILL: No, Sir, I am afraid it is not possible to name any date. I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply given to his question of the 15th May, to which it may be added that it is left entirely to the county authorities to propose the dates for these marches, and that the suggestion was made to general officers commanding-in-chief of Commands that if possible it should be arranged in coordinating the proposals that no two marches should be held on the same date, as otherwise there might be some difficulty in rendering any assistance required in the way of accommodation, tentage, etc.

Oral Answers to Questions — MOTOR LORRIES, MONS.

Sir WILLIAM DAVISON: 22.
asked the Secretary for War whether some thousands of motor lorries have been parked in the open at Mons for many months; whether such lorries have seriously deteriorated by reason of exposure to the weather as well as theft of certain of their parts; and what steps he proposes to take to prevent further deterioration of national property?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I understand that lorries have been parked in the open
throughout the War, and I have no reason to think that serious deterioration results at Mons, any more than at other reception parks. I have no knowledge of the theft of parts to which my hon. Friend refers, but if he can give me further particulars I will have inquiry made.

Oral Answers to Questions — SOLDIERS' GRAVES (INSCRIPTIONS).

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 23.
asked the Secretary of State for War if the next-of-kin of soldiers buried in France and Flanders will be given the option of choosing a few words for the inscription on the monument marking their graves when new monuments are being set up?

Mr. CHURCHILL: Yes, Sir, the Imperial War Graves Commission have arranged for inscriptions chosen by the next-of-kin to be engraved on the headstones at a cost of about 3½d. a letter, whenever desired.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: Will this be made public, as there are a lot of inquiries in the country?

Mr. CHURCHILL: It will be made public by an answer to a question in this House.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL ARMY ORDNANCE CORPS (LAUNDRY CONTRACTS).

Mr. DONALD: 26.
asked the Secretary for War if the Royal Army Ordnance Corps have recently entered into contracts for laundry work with charitable institution laundries in Ireland in which neither wages nor conditions are in accordance with Clauses 17, 18, and 19 of Contract Form No. 21; and, if so, if he will say whether he is prepared to give instructions that such contracts shall be can celled?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. Forster): Sixteen contracts in all are held by charitable institutions in Ireland and in fourteen of these cases no commercial firms tendered for the work. The answer to the last part of the question is in the negative.

Oral Answers to Questions — EAST AFRICAN CAMPAIGN.

NATIVE CARRIER CORPS.

Brigadier - General Sir OWEN THOMAS: 27.
asked the Secretary for War if he will state the number of African
natives enrolled in the Carrier Corps during the East African campaign and the number of these natives who died during the campaign; if an inquiry was held into the cause of the number of deaths; and, of so, whether the Report of such inquiry-is available?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I have no figures showing the total number of African natives enrolled in the Carrier Corps during the East African campaign. The largest number on the strength at any one time was about 137,000. From the beginning of operations up to the end of October, 1917, the deaths from disease or accident amongst "Followers" were: Indian, 243; East African, 28,830; South African, 1,214; West African, 793; Seychelles, 246. I have no figures of deaths subsequent to October, 1917, but I understand the death rate showed a falling off from January, 1918. I have no knowledge of any inquiry into the cause of the number of deaths.

COST.

Sir O. THOMAS: 40.
asked the Secretary of State for War if he will state what is the total expenditure to date in connection with the East African campaign; whether he will state the number of staff officers, officers, and men, both European and native, at present On service in the country and the daily cost of the same; and whether, in view of the manner in which this campaign was conducted, he is prepared to institute an inquiry into the details of and responsibility for the expenditure on the whole campaign?

Mr. FORSTER: I regret that the form of Government accounts does not admit of the total expenditure on a particular campaign being ascertained without a great deal of research. The present force in East Africa is about 15,000 officers and men, mostly natives, of whom about half are in course of demobilisation, and the present cost is, roughly, £4,500 a day. The accounts of these operations have, like other war accounts, been annually audited and reported upon to the Public Accounts Committee, and I am not aware of any circumstances calling for the institution of a further special inquiry into this expenditure.

Sir O. THOMAS: Is it not a fact that the East African campaign has cost nearly £500,000,000—double the amount of the South African War?

Mr. FORSTER: No. I do not think there is anything approaching that sum of money involved.

Sir O. THOMAS: I have asked the question?

Mr. FORSTER: I cannot give the total expenditure without a great deal of research, and, honestly, I do not think it would be worth the labour involved. If my hon. and gallant Friend wants a very rough estimate, I dare say that could be provided, but I do not think it would come to anything approaching the figure he has mentioned.

Sir O. THOMAS: I should like to have it.

62. The hon. and gallant Member further asked the Secretary of State for War whether he can state the number of Belgian troops, European and native, engaged in German East Africa during the whole of the campaign; what was the cost to the Belgian Government; and what assistance in munitions and money was given by the British to the Belgians in East Africa?

Mr. CHURCHILL: In 1914, one Belgian battalion co-operated in the defence of the Northern Rhodesian frontier against a German attack from East Africa. Early in 1915, this force was increased to three battalions. It was finally withdrawn in October, 1915, when its strength was forty-nine European officers and non-commissioned officers and 1,334 natives. In for General Smut's offensive, 12,300 Belgian troops including some 600 Europeans, were assembled. Probably not more than 500 Europeans and 8,500 native troops actually crossed the frontier. In 1917, a Belgian Field Force, about 4,000 strong, took part in the Mahenge operations; in October, 1917, all but four battalions were withdrawn. The number of Europeans is not known, but was probably about 200. The Belgian troops took no further part in active operations. I regret that I have no information as to the cost of these troops to the Belgian Government. Considerable assistance in munitions and supplies was given by the British to the Belgians in East Africa, but it is impossible to estimate its value.

Oral Answers to Questions — LONDON HOTELS (RELEASE).

Sir W. SUTHERLAND: 31.
asked what progress has been made with the release
of hotels in the London area taken over for military purposs, including the Royal Air Force?

Mr. CHURCHILL: The position with regard to the various hotels is as follows:

War Office.

De Keyser's Hotel, Adastral House, arrangements are under consideration for the early evacuation of this hotel.

Carter's Hotel, Albemarle Street. Released about the end of March, 1919.

War Department.

Great Central Hotel, Marylebone, used as an Officer's Hospital, will be vacated in the autumn.

Endsleigh Palace Hotel is managed by a Committee of the British Red Cross, with whom the War Department is in communication concerning its release.

Old Brunswick Hotel, Blackwall, was not used as a hotel when taken over, but as a hospital for Tropical Diseases by the Port of London Authority.

St. Andrew's Hotel, Guildford Street, has already been vacated.

Russell Court Hotel will be vacated by 1st July, 1919.

Privatali Hotel will be vacated within a week or two.

Buckingham Palace Hotel and Premier Hotel, Southampton Row, are being retained as hostels where beds are reserved for soldiers during demobilisation.

Royal Air Force.

Hotel Cecil will be vacated by the end of June, evacuation commencing at once.

Adelphi Hotel was given up in April, 1919.

Orchard Hotel, Portland Street, will probably be vacated by the end of July, 1919.

Covent Garden Hotel was vacated in April, 1919.

Cavendish Hotel, Jermyn Street, was vacated in January, 1919.

Canadian Red Cross.

Petrograd Hotel will be given up shortly.

New Zealand Headquarters.

Tollard Royal Hotel was empty for three years before being taken over by the War Department, and it is doubtful if it will continue to be used as a hotel.

American Expeditionary Force Headquarters.

Belgrave Mansions Hotel — Release by the American Expeditionary Force is under consideration.

Goring Hotel, already vacated by American Expeditionary Force:

Mr. HOGGE: Will the "garden city" at 10, Downing Street, started by my hon. Friend, also be vacated?

Mr. CHURCHILL: That is not under the War Office.

Oral Answers to Questions — RUSSIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE (MEDALS).

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 32.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether a special medal will be awarded for service in expeditions to Russia since the signing of the Armistice with Ger many, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey; and will the House of Commons have an opportunity of discussing the design on such medals?

Mr. CHURCHILL: At the moment there is no intention of awarding a special medal, but as operations in Russia are still continuing, it is impossible at present to estimate their scope, and therefore difficult to say whether a special medal in commemoration of such services will be required.

Oral Answers to Questions — TERRITORIAL FORCE.

Lieut.-Colonel CAMPION: 33.
asked the Secretary of. State for War whether it is his intention to bring home the cadres of first-line Territorial units now serving in the Armies of Occupation in order to facilitate the reconstruction of the Territorial Force at home; if so, how many officers and other ranks these cadres will contain; and whether he will consider the advisability of bringing home all officers and other ranks who joined such units prior to the year 1916 and are pre pared to continue service in the Territorial. Force at home?

Mr. CHURCHILL: Comprehensive instructions regarding the preliminary steps to be taken for the reconstruction of the Territorial Force have been issued and these include the return to the United Kingdom of first-line Territorial units, as and when they can be be spared. It is not considered that the presence in the United Kingdom of first-line units is necessary to enable the preliminary steps of reconstruction to be proceeded with. As regard the second part of the question, the strength of cadres varies with
the arm to which a unit belongs. In the case of an Infantry battalion a cadre amounts to four officers and forty-six other ranks, while a Royal Field Artillery battery totals from two officers and fifty-nine other ranks to three officers and 119 other ranks. The whole of the personnel referred to in the third part of my hon. and gallant Friend's question are demobilisable and are being released as rapidly as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions — DAMAGED PREMISES (EAST COAST).

Sir ARTHUR FELL: On a point of Order. There arc three questions standing in my name on the Paper. The first and third relate to the same subject, but the other question has been put between them. Would it not be possible that the questions on the same subject should be put together, and not separated in this way?

Mr. SPEAKER: They are printed in the order in. which they were handed in at the Table.

Sir A. FELL: I did not hand them in in that order.

Sir A. FELL: 36.
asked the Secretary of State for War if he will make more satisfactory arrangements for the settlement of claims for dilapidations of premises occupied as billets by soldiers for the past two or three years at the East Coast sea resorts; if the assessor for claims at Great Yarmouth is Captain Buckingham, of Lowestoft; if it will be possible for this assessor unaided to make the assessments under many months; and if they are not done immediately the whole letting season for the premises will be lost and great damage be suffered?

Mr. FORSTER: As regards the first part of the question, I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply given on the 22nd May to a similar question asked by the hon. and gallant Member for Epsom. With regard to the rest of the question, Great Yarmouth is included in the area dealt with by the War Department valuer at Lowestoft, but the valuer is not single-handed, as the question would seem to imply. The desirability of settling these cases without delay is fully realised, and all possible steps are being taken to effect this.

Sir A. FELL: Will the Secretary of State for War personally look into this subject, because the delay, owing to the system of having this gentleman coming round now and again to assess compensation, has caused a great deal of dissatisfaction?

Mr. FORSTER: I will give my personal attention to it.

Sir A. FELL: 38.
asked the Secretary tary of State for War if it is with his knowledge or authority that the assessors of damage done to premises in the East Coast towns which have been occupied by the military offer to the owners about one-third of the valuer's assessment of the damages, and if this is not accepted they tell the owners that they must present a Petition of Right against the Crown, and by this means try and force them to accept whatever is offered them?

Mr. FORSTER: I have no doubt there is often a difference of opinion between the War Department and property owners as to the amount that ought to be paid in settlement of dilapidation claims. I am informed that in the great majority of these cases the War Department valuers find that owners have not made an adequate allowance for reasonable wear and tear, or for the state of repair of the premises when the military authorities entered into occupation. The War Office has always deprecated any tendency on the part of valuers to adopt the attitude indicated in the latter part of my hon. Friend's question. If claims cannot be agreed locally, they are generally referred to higher authority at Command Headquarters, and, failing agreement there, to the War Office. Procedure by Petition of Right is regarded by the Department as a last resource, to be adopted only when all attempts to arrive at an amicable settlement have failed.

Sir A. FELL: May I ask whether it is not a fact that a Petition of Right is the only remedy these people have for the recovery of damages?

Mr. FORSTER: Where it is impossible to arrive at any kind of settlement, I think that is so.

Colonel THORNE: How are these compensations paid? By what method?

Mr. FORSTER: I must have notice of that.

Oral Answers to Questions — WIMBLEDON COMMON CAMP.

Sir A. FELL: 37.
asked the Secretary of State for War if he will state when the camp on Wimbledon Common will be closed and the common restored to the use of the public; if this camp includes the finest part in the centre of the common; and if he promised when the commons were taken that they should be the first places to be restored to their proper use when the War was over?

Mr. CHURCHILL: It is the intention to vacate the common land at the earliest possible moment when it is no longer needed for military purposes, but I regret that it is not possible at present to fix a dale by which it will be vacated. As regards the last part of the question, I do not recollect any specific promise having been given.

Oral Answers to Questions — VISITS TO WOUNDED.

Mr. WILLIAM CARTER: 41.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that a number of men wounded in the War are detained in hospitals many miles from their homes, and that, owing to the expense in travelling, it is impossible for their friends to visit them; and if he will take the necessary steps to send them to hospitals near their homes where possible?

Mr. CHURCHILL: As far as possible, wounded soldiers are sent to hospitals in the vicinity of their homes as soon as they are fit to travel, but, owing to the daily closing of hospitals, facilities for this are not so great as formerly. If, however, my hon. Friend will give me details of the cases to which he refers, arrangements will be made to meet them as far as possible. Of course, particular reasons, such as the necessity for specialised treatment given only at certain centres, may make it necessary to keep a man in a distant hospital for a time.

Oral Answers to Questions — ARMY OF OCCUPATION.

GERMANS AND BRITISH OFFICERS.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 42.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether Ger mans in the occupied territories have to take off their hats and step off the side
walk on meeting British officers; and whether this practice is likely to be discontinued on the signature of Peace?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I understand that when Germans speak to British officers they are required to take off their hats. As regards the last part of the question, I see no reason to suppose that the practice will be discontinued on the signing of Peace. It is one of the military regulations which are deemed appropriate to the period of occupation, and these regulations are very much less severe than those which the Germans were themselves accustomed to impose in conquered territory.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer my question? Are the Germans forced to take off their hats when they pass British officers in the street? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this practice is extremely unpopular among the British officers in that country, and, further, is he aware that this piece of Prussianism is not imposed where the American Armies are in occupation?

Lieut.-Colonel Sir J. NORTON GRIFFITHS: In view of the supreme importance attached to the question by the hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, will my right hon. Friend give the House an assurance that a new order will be issued, altering the state of things and compelling British officers to go off the side-walk and salute the German people?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I am sure it is very foreign to the British nature to take a harsh advantage of the position in an occupied country but it is considered that an Army of Occupation in an enemy country is entitled to certain definite acts of submission and respect from the inhabitants. We believe our regulations in that respect will bear comparison with any regulations brought in by any of the great Powers in the present War, and I am certainly not prepared to say that our Army should be deprived of this.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: If the American Army do not find it necessary, why should we be compelled to demand it?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I am quite content to be guided by the opinion of the officers who are responsible for the conduct of the British Army. I am quite certain that they are not likely to be on the side of undue severity.

Oral Answers to Questions — IMPERIAL WAR GRAVES COMMISSION.

Mr. GILBERT: 43.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether the opinion of the Armies in France was asked regarding the principle on which the scheme adopted by the Imperial War Graves Commission is based, namely, that there shall be equal treatment of the graves of all those who have given their lives to the common cause?

Mr. CHURCHILL: Yes, Sir. Sir Frederick Kenyon, upon whose recommendation the scheme adopted by the Imperial War Graves Commission is based, before presenting his Report made exhaustive inquiries among the Armies in the field, including the representatives of the Home and Dominion Forces, the relatives of the fallen, chaplains of the forces, and heads of religious denominations, and he found that the opinion of the very great majority of those whom he consulted was in favour of the principle of equality of treatment for all war graves.

Mr. GILBERT: 44.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether relatives of those who have fallen are allowed liberty of choice in regard to the inscriptions which are placed on the gravestones in the cemeteries on the Western front; whether it can be arranged that drawings or photographs showing how the war cemeteries will look when completed according to the designs of the Graves Commission can be supplied to all Members of this House so that they can show them to relatives that approach them; and can he have such designs also sent to all local town halls in the country for local exhibition?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I have already answered the first part of this question in the reply I gave to Question No. 23 by the hon. and gallant Member for Hull Central. With regard to the second and third parts, I am asking the Imperial War Graves Commission to arrange for photographs of drawings illustrative of the Commission's scheme to be placed in the Tea Room of the House. A pamphlet, entitled "The Graves of the Fallen," describing the work of the Commission and containing illustrations showing what the appearance of the cemeteries will be when the work of construction is completed, has been published and can be purchased, price 6d., from His Majesty's Stationery Office, or from any bookstall. I will ask the Com-
mission to consider whether the necessary expenditure should be authorised for supplying a copy of this pamphlet to all hon. Members, and also for sending copies to-all local town halls in the country. It is a very remarkable pamphlet, and the illustrations in it will deserve attention, and they will, I believe, tend to clarify opinion on this subject.

Mr. HOGGE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman why he requires to ask any permission. Is not every Member of the House entitled to any Government publication?

Mr. CHURCHILL: The Imperial War Graves Commission is a body with a separate organisation.

Mr. HOGGE: Set up by Parliament.

Mr. CHURCHILL: I could undoubtedly lay the document as a Parliamentary Paper. I do not anticipate there will be any difficulty.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Are they going to destroy the gravestones erected by comrades of the men who have fallen?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I think that my hon. and gallant Friend had better study the pamphlet, and he will then be in a better position to open inquiries on this subject.

Lieut.-Colonel SPENDER CLAY: 60.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether a definite scheme has been prepared by the Imperial War Graves Commission; and, if so, can the drawings of the proposed arrangement be put up for inspection in the Tea Room of the House of Commons?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I understand that drawings illustrative of the Imperial War Graves Commission's scheme have been made by an artist of repute and I will ask the Commission to arrange for photographs of these drawings to be placed in the Tea Room of the House for inspection by hon. Members.

Oral Answers to Questions — INTERNED ENEMY ALIENS.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 46.
asked the Prime Minister whether he can give the British-born wives of enemy aliens any information as to when their husbands are likely to be released from internment?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir Hamar Greenwood): My right hon. Friend has asked me to reply to this question. The Home Secretary regrets that he cannot make any general statement on this point, except that no person will be kept in internment longer than is necessary in the public interest.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the aliens have recently been removed from Alexandra Park to Frimley, where their British-born wives are quite unable to visit them, as the camp is four miles from the railway station at the end of a long railway journey? Can it be arranged that the husbands of English wives be liberated at the earliest possible moment?

Oral Answers to Questions — ENEMY PRISONERS IN JAPAN.

Mr. LYLE: 47.
asked the Prime Minister whether any provision has been made against the settlement in any part of the British Empire of the 4,000 German and Austrian prisoners who are now in Japan and will, presumably, be released after the conclusion of Peace?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The persons referred to will come under the Regulations as to the admission of aliens which vary in different parts of the Empire.

Oral Answers to Questions — LIQUOR CONTROL.

Colonel ASHLEY: 48.
asked the Prime Minister why, with reference to the con-tool of the manufacture, sale, and distribution of intoxicating liquors, the War Cabinet are consulting certain unknown and unrepresentative individuals, instead of going for guidance to the House of Commons?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The War Cabinet has asked a Committee of Ministers, assisted by representatives from the Ministry of Food and the Central Control Board, to furnish them with a Report on this subject.

Mr. J. JONES: Are any working-class organisations being invited?

Mr. BONAR LAW: This is not a general inquiry. It is a Committee set up to
advise the Government, which consists of Ministers and representatives of the Ministry of Food and the Control Board.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir J. HOPE: Can the right hon. Gentleman give the names of the Committee?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I have already said it is quite unusual and it is very undesirable to give the names of a Cabinet Committee appointed to advise the Cabinet.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSING.

TEMPORARY ACCOMMODATION (DEMOBILISED MEN).

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 49.
asked the Prime Minister if he will consider immediately taking over large empty houses, under the Defence of the Realm Act or other emergency Order, with the object of turning them into temporary accommodation for. demobilised soldiers and sailors and their families until such time as more houses are built?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Major Astor): My right hon. Friend is advised that the steps suggested could not be taken under any powers conferred by the Defence of the Realm Acts. The hon. Member is no doubt aware of the powers proposed to be conferred on local authorities by the Housing Bill of acquiring and adapting existing premises, and of the provision in that Bill authorising the conversion of large houses into several tenements in certain circumstances.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: May I ask when this is going to commence?

Major ASTOR: As soon as the Bill becomes an Act.

NEWPORT SCHEME.

Mr. CHARLES EDWARDS: 104.
asked the President of the Local Government Board whether he is aware that the Newport Housing Committee have applied for sanction to purchase three sites for housing in the borough but up to now has not received such sanction; and, seeing the urgency of providing houses, will he see that sanction is immediately given so that this authority can proceed with the same?

Major ASTOR: Yes, Sir. Three sites for housing have been submitted to the Local Government Board by the Newport Cor-
poration, but the Board were not prepared to sanction loans for the purchase of the land, in view of the price demanded. The purchase of the one site has now been arranged at £3,815 less than the price which the council proposed to pay; in the case of another site it is hoped that a satisfactory arrangement will shortly be made. For the third site it is understood that the vendor is not willing to make any reduction in his original price, and the Board have intimated that they are not prepared to sanction a loan for £16,200 for the purchase of land which is valued at £10,750.

Colonel THORNE: What is the Board going to do in a case of that kind where the landlord absolutely refuses to sell, and there is no other land vacant?

Major ASTOR: There are compulsory powers if it is impossible to acquire the land by agreement.

Oral Answers to Questions — LEAGUE OF NATIONS,

BRITISH DOMINIONS (REPRESENTATION).

Sir N. GRIFFITHS: 51.
asked the Prime Minister whether in the constitution of the League of Nations it is the intention of the Government that the representation of the self-governing British Dominions will be as full as that of the smaller sovereign nations; and whether a representative of the Dominions is eligible for appointment to the executive council?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The answer to both parts of the question is in the affirmative. As regards the second part, the Dominions will be eligible for appointment to the Council on exactly the same terms as the other members of the League not permanently represented on it.

Oral Answers to Questions — PEACE TERMS.

Lieut.-Colonel LOWTHER: 52.
asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the fact that no day will be accorded to Members of this House for the discussion of the Peace Terms, he is able to assure them that the Peace Terms will provide for the payment in full of the British Empire's war debt by enemy countries and that the dates of repayment will be left to the discretionary powers of the Inter national Commission?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I can add nothing to the replies which I have already given on this subject, and to Section VIII. [...] the Official Summary of the Peace Terms published in the Press.

Lieut.-Colonel LOWTHER: In view of the very unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I will call attention to this subject on the Motion for Adjournment for Whitsuntide.

Mr. HOGGE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say, in view of the Recess, whether he will be able to say something about this before the Adjournment?

Mr. BONAR LAW: No. I see no prospect, and I should be surprised if the hon. Member and the House generally do not realise that the present moment would be a particularly inopportune one for such a statement.

Oral Answers to Questions — OIL DISCOVERY (PROPERTY).

Mr. BROAD: 53.
asked the Prime Minister whether, now that oil has been discovered at Hardstoft, in Derbyshire, it is the intention of the Government to take any and what steps to secure that the property in the oil shall be secured to the Crown?

The DEPUTY-MINISTER Of MUNITIONS (Mr. Kellaway): The question raised by my hon. Friend is receiving the careful consideration of His Majesty's Government. Perhaps I may be allowed to add that the oil at Hardstoft has reached a height of about 2,400 ft., and is rising at about the rate of 340ft. a day.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: When does the-Government expect to decide whether this petroleum belongs to the Crown or to the owners of the land?

Mr. SPEAKER: Notice should be given of that question.

Oral Answers to Questions — LAW OFFICERS (IRELAND).

The following question stood on the Order Paper in the name of Mr. MacVEAGH:

55. To ask the Lord Privy Seal whether attention has been called to the fact that the Master of the Rolls stated in the High Court of Justice in Ireland on 27th May, in the case of O'Reilly v Finlay, that the conduct of the Attorney-General in that
case had been indiscreet; whether his attention has been called to the animadversion by other judges of the High Court in the two other cases of habeas corpus motions; whether he is further aware that the Court of King's Bench has quashed the convictions in the cases of Mr. Flavin and Mr. Fitzgibbon, two newsagents of Listowel; whether the Irish Law Officers advised in all these cases; and whether, in view of the fact that the law is thus being broken in Ireland by those who are charged with its administration, he will state what action the Government proposes to take?

Mr. MacVEAGH: I have been asked to postpone this question, but I do not see why the right hon. Gentleman cannot answer it now.

Mr. BONAR LAW: The reason is that I have not the information.

Mr. MacVEAGH: The information is all in the question.

Oral Answers to Questions — GOLD TRADE.

Mr. RAPER: 57.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer when it is proposed to withdraw the existing restrictions on the gold trade?

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Chamberlain): It is essential to retain the prohibition on the export of gold coin and bullion, and also the prohibition on melting gold coin or using it otherwise than as currency. I am not aware of any other restrictions on the use or purchase of gold.

Mr. RAPER: Are there not restrictions from the sale of gold, such as from the South African mines?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Perhaps the hon. Member will communicate with me on the question?

Oral Answers to Questions — INCOME TAX.

WAR LOAN.

Mr. SWAN: 58.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will state the number of persons who receive £50 or over from War Loan as interest and who will be called upon to pay Income Tax in excess of that amount?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The information asked for is not available.

Mr. SWAN: Can the right hon. Gentleman obtain it?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: There is no way of obtaining the information the hon. Member asks.

Oral Answers to Questions — ARTICLED CLERKS (NAVY AND ARMY).

Mr. TURTON: 59.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been called to the case of articled clerks who joined the Navy and Army during the currency of their articles and have now decided to adopt the Navy or Army as a profession; and whether in such cases he will repay to such persons an amount of the Stamp Duty of £85 paid by them on their articles proportionate to the unexpired period?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I will consider the hon. Member's suggestion, and give him a definite answer after Whitsuntide if he will then repeat his question.

Mr. TURTON: May I ask if that will include members of the Royal Air Force?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Obviously it would be necessary to include them. I do not want to prejudge the decision, but the narrowest class, if it is given at all, will be those in the fighting forces. We may have to consider those who joined the Civil Service as well as those who came into the public services of the State.

Oral Answers to Questions — CIVILIAN CLOTHING.

Mr. A. SHAW: 64.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the shortage of clothing material for civilian wear and the prices now being charged, and in order to mitigate unemployment in the dyeing and clothing trades, he will place upon the market a substantial monthly quantity of the 6,500,000 yards of material suitable for dyeing for civilian wear which is now being held up by the War Office?

Mr. FORSTER: Such quantities of material as are surplus to Army requirements will, when the latter are settled, be reported to the Disposals Board, with whom rest the arrangements for the disposal of surplus stocks.

Oral Answers to Questions — WAR GRATUITIES.

Colonel YATE: 65.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether, considering that the gratuities given to officers of the rank of lieutenant-colonel, brigadier-general, and major-general for the South African War, which lasted two years, were more than the maximum gratuities that can be drawn by any officer of those ranks after five years' service overseas in the present War, he will represent the unfairness of the present scale of gratuities to His Majesty's Government and ask for reconsideration, of the matter and the issue of a revised Warrant.

Mr. FORSTER: The rates of gratuity were fixed by His Majesty's Government with full knowledge and after careful consideration of the rates paid after the South African War, and I regret that I am unable to entertain my hon. and gallant Friend's suggestion on the strength of this comparison.

Colonel YATE: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the question on its merits, and does he not see how utterly inadequate the present gratuities are?

Mr. FORSTER: That is a matter of opinion.

Oral Answers to Questions — ALDERSHOT BARRACKS (REPAIRS).

Mr. J. JONES: 68.
asked the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether he is aware that the work of renovating and repairing the barracks and married quarters in Aldershot is being curtailed in consequence of the insufficiency of the financial grant for this purpose; that men, most of them ex-soldiers, are being discharged, although there is still much work to be done; that with the discharges which have already taken place, and others expected, the staff of men employed on this work will be less than that employed before the War, although very little work has been done during the War, and a large amount of repairing work is necessary; and whether he will take steps to increase the money devoted to this purpose so that the necessary work may be taken in hand and the present discharges avoided?

Mr. FORSTER: The question of making further allotments to Aldershot will be given the most careful consideration.

Mr. JONES: Can the right hon. Gentleman explain why it is that the Govern-
ment, who are appealing to employers to expedite work to find employment are not themselves doing so?

Mr. FORSTER: I do not think I could admit that.

Oral Answers to Questions — LARCENY CHARGE, GRIMSBY.

Mr. MacVEAGH: 69.
asked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the fact that three small boys pleaded guilty at Grimsby to a charge of theft; whether it transpired that before being charged they had been taken into custody by the police and detained; whether he is aware that the magistrate held that such procedure was illegal and repugnant to justice and therefore released the boys; and what action he proposes to take?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I am informed that the boys were not taken into custody or detained. They were proceeded against by summons, but they had previously been taken to the police station in connection with the inquiry as to theft, and a young constable of three and a half months' service, in the absence of other officers, showed one of the boys the cells, and said, "That is where boys are put who do not tell the truth." His superior officers were unaware of this until the constable admitted it at the hearing, whereupon the responsible superintendent withdrew the charge, and the magistrates dismissed the case.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Were the magistrates right in carrying out the law in this specific case?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: It is not for me to criticise the action of the learned magistrates.

Mr. MacVEAGH: If that is the law in this country, may I ask the hon. Gentleman to be good enough to send a note of the case to the Attorney-General and the Chief Secretary for Ireland, both of whom are breaking the law every day.

Oral Answers to Questions — GERMAN CIVIL PRISONERS.

Mr. LEONARD LYLE: 70.
asked the Home Secretary how many of the German civil prisoners interned in this country during the War have now been repatriated and how many remain; how many have
been liberated; whether any camps are completely vacated; and what provision, under the terms of the Peace Treaty, is made for the dispersal of the men who are still detained?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: The number of German civil prisoners repatriated up to the 22nd May was 23,073 and repatriations are still in progress. The number interned on the 23rd May was 3,634. No question of liberating these men arises pending decisions upon their applications for exemption from repatriation which are now being considered by Mr. Justice Younger's Committee. The camps at Ripon, Spalding, Douglas, and Hackney Wick have been vacated, and the Alexandra Palace is now in course of evacuation. Under the provisions of the Peace Treaty any Germans still interned in the United Kingdom who desire to go back to Germany will be sent without delay, and the British Government will have the right to deal in its own discretion with any who do not desire to be repatriated.

Colonel THORNE: May I ask if any prisoners of war interned in this country want to go back?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: They have no option.

Oral Answers to Questions — POLICE PENSIONERS.

Mr. DOYLE: 71.
asked the Home Secretary if he will state how many pensioned police-constables there are in London and in other parts of the United Kingdom; if he will give the number of such pensioned constables employed in the Royal parks and State institutions; how many are employed by local authorities and public bodies; and whether their pay for such work is lower than the standard rate of wages for the district?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: The number of pensioners from the Metropolitan police on 31st March was 9,450. I cannot give the exact number from the county and borough police forces of England and Wales, but it is between 14,000 and 15,000. I am sorry that the other particulars asked for are not available. The view taken, as I believe, by all Government Departments is that the fact that an applicant for employment of any kind is in receipt of a pension from public funds affords no ground for offering him pay below the standard rate of wages for
such employment. I have no reason to think that any different view is taken by local authorities or other public bodies.

Oral Answers to Questions — NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

CASE FOR INQUIRY.

Mr. RAE: 73.
asked the Pensions Minister if he will state what steps he proposes to take to grant suitable and sufficient pension allowances to the guardians of the two children of Private Deakin, No. 12091, Grenadier Guards, who died of wounds received in action on 12th July, 1915, aged respectively ten years and five years, whose mother died in June, 1917, and since which date no grants or allowances for their support have been made, and who are now being supported by a soldier relative demobilised on 4th March, 1919?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of PENSIONS (Sir James Craig): This Ministry has never had any information regarding children of the late Private Deakin, nor does it appear that separation allowance was claimed in respect of such during the soldier's lifetime. If my hon. Friend will furnish me with the names of the children and the name and address of their guardian, I will have the matter attended to immediately.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND.

SHEEP COUNT, INVERAILORT.

Sir G. YOUNGER: 74.
asked the Secretary for Scotland whether he can now state the result of the sheep count of July last on that part of Inverailort stocked under the tenancy created by order of the Scottish Board of Agriculture; whether he can give any estimate of the losses during last winter; and how the stock of sheep now stands?

The SECRETARY for SCOTLAND (Mr. Munro): The answers to the first and third parts of the question are that at 31st July last the grazing tenant had 500 sheep on the ground, and that at the present time it is reported that there are being grazed some 600 sheep and fifty head of cattle. With regard to the second part of the question, I am not in a position to give an estimate of the losses during last winter, as no reliable figures will be available until the clipping time in July.

Sir G. YOUNGER: Can the right hon. Gentleman not tell me what the losses were the previous count?

Mr. MUNRO: I have not got that information before me, but I will endeavour to obtain it.

Sir G. YOUNGER: Can he say whether the stock which is now on the ground has been increased by fresh sheep being brought in since the last count?

Mr. MUNRO: I am having a full report on the circumstances sent to me, and I will communicate with my hon. Friend when I have received it.

LAW OF INTESTACY.

Mr. STURROCK: 76.
asked the Lord Advocate whether, in view of the hardship imposed upon widows and dependants of soldiers, sailors, and airmen by the operation of the law of intestacy in Scotland, he can undertake to promote an amending Bill during the present Session of Parliament to enact that all estates not exceeding a total value of £35 will be issued in their entirety to the person who, in the case of a Service man's estate, is drawing the pension?

Mr. MUNRO: The matter referred to by my hon. Friend is receiving my consideration in consultation with the Lord Advocate.

Mr. STURROCK: Will he, as soon as possible, give us a definite statement on this highly-important matter?

Mr. MUNRO: I hope so.

Oral Answers to Questions — LAND FOR EX-SERVICE MEN.

Dr. D. MURRAY: 75.
asked the Secretary for Scotland if ha can state when he will be in a position to introduce his proposals for the settlement of soldiers and sailors upon the land; and whether, in view of the unrest in Lewis and Harris, he will direct the Board of Agriculture to proceed at once with the schemes for small holdings already adopted by the Board for that area?

Mr. MUNRO: I hope to introduce the Bill referred to immediately after the Whitsuntide recess. As my hon. Friend is aware, the recent change in the ownership of the Island of Lewis has been followed by negotiations with the new proprietor which are still proceeding.
While I fully recognise the urgency of the position, I am unwilling to abandon any chance of a settlement by consent. As my hon. Friend is aware, the Board has recently purchased land in Skye and elsewhere, some of which it is hoped may be available to mitigate congestion in the Island of Lewis.

Mr. DOYLE: 84.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture if he will state how many demobilised soldiers and sailors have applied for land as small holdings: and how many and to what extent such claims have been satisfied?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Sir Arthur Boscawen): I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave to the question addressed to me on the 21st ultimo by the hon. Member for Pontypool, a copy of which I am sending to him. The figures have not changed materially since that date.

Mr. DOYLE: 85.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture if he will state what steps, if any, are being taken, in view of the sale of estates, many of which are within easy reach of industrial centres by motor transport, to buy such land for the purpose of parcelling it out in small holdings for demobilised soldiers and sailors?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: County councils are considering the purchase of all land suitable for small holdings which comes into the market, and their officials are engaged continuously in inspecting and reporting on such land. The Board have arranged for particulars of all forthcoming sales of agricultural land to be sent to the county councils concerned as well as to the Board's District Commissioners. The land is then inspected and if found suitable the county council is authorised by the Board to bid for it.

Oral Answers to Questions — FOOD SUPPLIES.

CONSUMERS' COUNCIL.

Mr. MARRIOTT: 77.
asked the Food Controller if he will give to the House the names of the Consumers' Council of the Food Department and will state whether they serve on that council as individuals or as directly or indirectly representing any other organised bodies; when and by
whom they wore appointed; whether they receive any emoluments or allowances for expenses; and, if so, what is the total cost of the council per month?

The MINISTER of FOOD (Mr. Roberts): The names of the members of the Consumers' Council and the bodies which they respectively represent are given in a Memorandum which' I am forwarding to the hon. Member. The members of the Council were selected by the various bodies which they represent, while those members representing "unorganised consumers" were appointed by the Ministry of Food. The date of the appointment of the Council was January, 1918. The members of the Council receive no emoluments, but are paid allowances for travelling expenses and subsistence in accordance with the ordinary scale approved by His Majesty's Treasury. The average monthly expenditure under this head for the four months January to April, 1919, was £206.

MILK.

Sir A. YEO: 78.
asked the Food Controller if he can announce the names of the producers in possession of licences for the sale of Grade A milk?

Mr. ROBERTS: The hon. Member will not desire me to read out a list of names, and I am, therefore, forwarding the information for which he asks.

FISH.

Mr. W. R. SMITH: 79.
asked the Food Controller whether he has any information as to the destruction of a large quantity of mackerel at Plymouth on or about the 16th of May; whether the cause of such destruction, was a desire on the part of buyers to keep up prices; and will he take steps in future to prevent such waste and make such arrangements as will enable this food to be distributed in future for the good of the people?

Mr. ROBERTS: I am aware that a considerable quantity of mackerel was destroyed in the Plymouth area on Friday, 16th May. This was due to the fact that very large quantities were landed at the end of the week in question and a balance was left over after all local requirements had been satisfied and full use made of railway facilities to other areas. Further, a portion of the surplus was preserved until the following day by icing. I may say that the local officer of the Ministry
of Food has taken steps to prevent, so far as possible, a similar occurrence in the future by co-operation between the fishermen and local buyers.

Sir E. CARSON: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether there is any penalty where there is destruction of food on the part of buyers for the purpose of keeping up prices?

Mr. ROBERTS: Oh, yes; we shall not hesitate to take proceedings in any such case.

FOOD PRICES.

Mr. SUGDEN: 81.
asked the Food Controller if he will state what steps he purposes to take to reduce the cost of living, in view of the fact that the data published in the "Labour Gazette" for the two months ending in April shows retail prices of food fell from 120 per cent. to 107 per cent. above pre-war level, but there was actually an increase in the cost of living during the two months due to improvement in the supply of certain foodstuffs, greater consumption, and therefore greater expenditure?

Mr. ROBERTS: I am aware that during the two months in question increased consumption of foodstuffs involved increased expenditure. I have under continuous and close consideration the question of reducing the price of foodstuffs to the utmost extent possible, but I do not regard it as within my province to place restrictions on the amount of food consumed by any class of the community except in so far as they are rendered necessary by shortage of supplies.

Mr. SUGDEN: May I ask if preference in shipping will be given to those articles of food which are a necessity, rather than to articles of expensive food luxury—of food which are the cause of the increased cost of living, and also no increased physical advantage to the people?

Mr. ROBERTS: Yes, I am endeavouring to arrange shipping so as to bring an increased supply of commodities which are short.

Oral Answers to Questions — RABIES (STRAY DOGS).

Major DAVID DAVIES: 82.
asked the Parliamentary 'Secretary to the Board of Agriculture if he can state how many stray dogs have been taken by the authorities in the areas where the Muzzling Order has already been applied?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: The Board do not receive any Return as to stray dogs seized under the provisions of their Orders and the Dogs' Act, and they are not, therefore, in a position to supply the information desired by my hon. Friend.

Major DAVIES: 83.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture if he will state what arrangements have been made with the Home Office regarding the enforcement of the Regulations relating to the suppression of rabies; whether any instructions have been given to the police; and whether any bonus has been offered to police constables for taking into custody any stray dogs in their respective areas?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: It was not necessary to make any arrangement with the Home Office on this matter. By Section 43 of the Diseases of Animals Act, 1894, the police force of each police area execute and enforce the Act and every Order issued there under. The Board have no information on the latter part of the question.

Oral Answers to Questions — GERMAN PRISONERS (EMPLOYMENT ON FARMS).

Mr. HAYDAY: 86.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether ho is aware that large numbers of German prisoners are employed on farms; whether he is aware that the presence of these prisoners is giving rise to friction with our own workmen; and whether steps will be taken to remove the prisoners without delay?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: German prisoners are at present employed on farms in districts where no other labour is available. I am not aware that the presence of these prisoners is giving rise to friction. Instructions have been issued that no German prisoners are to be employed in districts where the Labour Exchange can supply labour, and the Ministry of Labour and the Board of Agriculture arc closely co-operating in this matter. I may add that there is a great shortage of agricultural labour, and the work on the land is seriously hampered for want of it.

Mr. HAYDAY: Can the hon. Member tell us the terms of contract upon which German prisoners were supplied to agriculturists, and do the agricultural rates
apply, or is German labour paid at a cheaper rate than our own civilian labourer?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: There is a definite scale which I believe is a perfectly fair one, and if the hon. Member will put a question down, I will supply it.

Mr. W. R. SMITH: May I ask if he is aware that agricultural labourers are being discharged at the present time—[Hon. Members: "Where?"]—and whether, if any cases are sent to him, he will determine whether or not German labour is-required?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: I only wish I knew where they were being discharged; I could certainly find employment for them.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE.

BRUSH TRADE.

Brigadier-General PALMER: 88.
asked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware of the injury done to the brush trade caused by the importation of Japanese and Italian goods produced by labour at least 75 per cent. cheaper than in this country; and if he proposes protecting the workers in this trade, who are capable of supplying all our wants, and who, if not protected, will be thrown out of work?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Bridge-man): I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to the answer given to similar questions yesterday.

Oral Answers to Questions — STEAMSHIP "LUSITANIA" (RECORDS OF INQUIRY).

Commander BELLAIRS: 89.
asked the- President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that inquiries into the losses of merchants ships are held in public, but the inquiry into the loss of the "Lusitania" was held in secret because of the War; and whether he will now release to the Press the records of this inquiry as a matter of public interest in the British Empire and the United States?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am consulting the Admiralty as to the possibility of publishing that part of the evidence which was given in camera at the inquiry into the loss of the steamship "Lusitania," and will inform my hon. and gallant Friend of the result.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH CONTRACTS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES (WAGES).

Captain BOWYER: 90.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the agents of British firms in foreign countries are finding themselves unable to obtain contracts for British firms owing to the necessity for the tenders to contain a conditional clause safe guarding the firm in the event of fluctuation of wages and cost of materials being increased; whether he is aware that they are thus prevented from quoting a fixed price in the tender; that as a result cases have occurred in which a foreign tender has been accepted although the price was higher than that quoted in the British tender owing to the fact that it was a fixed price, whereas the British tender quoted a price conditional on the fluctuation of wages and prices; and what steps it is the intention of His Majesty's Government to take to enable British firms to compete with foreign firms on equal grounds in this respect?

Mr. BRIDGE MAN: Until commercial and industrial conditions become more stable, it is, I am afraid, inevitable that British manufacturers should find difficulty in quoting firm prices, but I trust that the early settlement of outstanding wage questions will be conducive to greater stability at an early date.

Oral Answers to Questions — RAILWAY ADMINISTRATION.

FREIGHT RATES.

Mr. RAPER: 91.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that railway freight rates in the United Kingdom are the highest in the world, despite the fact that this country is non- mountainous and well supplied with coal and iron; and is this fact an incubus on the trade of the country and in effect a fiscal policy of protection in favour of the foreigner?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I believe that railway freight rates in this country are primâ facie higher than in most other countries, but there are various factors to be taken into account, such as the services tendered, the size of consignment, the length of haul, etc., which render an effective comparison very difficult.

Mr. RAPER: Is it not correct that the railway freight rates of the United Kingdom are the highest in the world?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: It may be correct—I do not dispute it, on the face of it—but the conditions are different in different parts of the world."

Oral Answers to Questions — ROAD WORK PROGRAMME.

Mr. ATKEY: 93.
asked the Secretary to the Treasury whether the Road Board can now give an approximate estimate of how much of the £ 40,000,000 road programme which was approved by the Government for 1919–20with the double object of re storing the condition of the roads and giving work to demobilised soldiers and ex-munition workers will be carried out during the current financial year?

Mr. BALDWIN (Joint Financial Secretary to the Treasury): The sum which the Road Board have authority to distribute in grants or loans to highway authorities for road and bridge work in 1919–20is £10,000,000. The work will be carried out by many highway authorities throughout the country, and no estimate can at present be made as to the amount of work which they will complete in the current financial year.

Mr. ATKEY: 94.
asked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware of the complaints of the dusty condition of the roads made "by dwellers in towns and villages and by residents in houses situated upon the principal roads of the country during the recent spell of dry weather; and whether he will state what arrangements have been made by the Road Board to advance the tar-spraying programme for the current year?

Mr. BALDWIN: The Road Board have arranged this year to make Grants towards a larger tar-spraying programme than in any previous year in addition to the tar-spraying programme which highway authorities execute out of their own resources. The highway authorities concerned are proceeding with this work with the greatest expedition possible.

Mr. ATKEY: 95.
asked the Secretary to the Treasury whether the Road Board can state what proportion of the 150,000 miles in England and Wales will be tar-sprayed this year; and what steps they are taking to assist the local authorities to obtain supplies of tar and grit to enable this work to be got on with without delay?

Mr. BALDWIN: No information is available as to the total mileage which will be tar-sprayed by the highway authorities this year. These authorities generally, according to the information of the Road Board, do not apprehend any general deficiency in the supplies of tar and grit if transport facilities are maintained at their present standard of adequacy.

Mr. ATKEY: 96.
asked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that local authorities and road surveyors in all parts of the country, and particularly in the South-East of England, are complaining of the difficulty of getting materials and transport of materials for the purpose of restoring and improving the roads; and what steps the Road Board are taking to assist the local authorities to obtain supplies and transport?

Mr. BALDWIN: The Road Board have not found in their communications with highway authorities that they are finding any serious or widespread difficulties in regard to the supply of materials or transport, but each case where a difficulty occurs is taken up, and every possible assistance rendered to the authorities.

Oral Answers to Questions — BOARD OF CUSTOMS AND EXCISE MEDICAL OFFICER.

Mr. T. WILSON: 97.
asked the Secretary to the Treasury whether the position of medical officer to the Board of Customs and Excise, which has been vacant for three months, has been filled; and, if not, will he state the cause of the delay in filling that important position?

Mr. BALDWIN: I am informed that this post has now been vacant for two and a half months. It is necessary that the holder of it should possess special qualifications, and careful consideration is therefore being given to the selection of the new appointee, whose name will, I hope, be announced shortly. In the meantime the duties of the post are being efficiently performed by a locum tenens.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRICKS (PRICE).

Brigadier-General CROFT: 99.
asked the Minister of Reconstruction whether the Government intend to sell bricks at the prices they have purchased them or
whether it is intended to make a profit on the transaction; and whether, in view of the shortage of rolling stock, he will take special steps to encourage the recommencement of work on small brickfields throughout the country?

Mr. KELLAWAY: It is not intended to make a profit on the sale of bricks to the local authorities. Every possible step is being taken to encourage the reopening of the smaller brickfields, of which the output is likely to be useful to the housing schemes.

Oral Answers to Questions — LLANGYFELACH PARISH OFFICERS.

Mr. JOHN WILLIAMS: 100.
asked the President of the Local Government Board whether he has received a report from Councillor Dan Jenkins, Brondolau, Penllergaer, containing allegations of alleged irregularities committed by the Llangyfelach Parish Council in the matter of the recent appointment of an assistant overseer; whether he has sanctioned such appointment; and, if not, whether he will investigate the matter before the appointment is sanctioned by him?

Major ASTOR: My right hon. Friend has received a communication, as mentioned by the hon. Member, respecting the appointment of the assistant overseer for the parish referred to. The appointment, however, rests with the parish council, and does not require the sanction of his Department.

Mr. J. WILLIAMS: 101.
asked the President of the Local Government Board whether representations have been made to him by the Welsh section of the Swan sea branch of the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers protesting against the appointment of a relieving officer for the Llangyfelach district, South Wales, made recently by the guardians of the Swansea Union; whether he is aware that the person so appointed is a monoglot English man and that 90 per cent. of the persons living in the said district are Welsh speaking; whether he is aware that three Welsh-speaking discharged soldiers were on the short list for final selection; and whether he will investigate the mode of selection and nullify the appointment if he feels justified in so doing after such investigation?

Major ASTOR: The hon. Member's question relates, I think, to the appoint-
ment last October of a relieving officer for the Morriston, Llansanlet, etc., Belief District of the Swansea Union. My right hon. Friend does not appear so far to have received any protests against the appointment. In reporting the appointment, the guardians intimated that the Welsh language is much used in the district and that the candidate appointed had yet to learn the language. Their report also showed that the five selected candidates who were tested by examination included three ex-soldiers, and that the candidate appointed was easily first in the examination. My right hon. Friend does not think that any course was open to his predecessor but to approve the appointment for the period of the War, and he can not reopen the matter at the present time.

Oral Answers to Questions — COTTON EXPORT CORPORATIONS, UNITED STATES.

Mr. SUGDEN: 105.
asked the President of the Local Government Board what steps he proposes to take to prevent the cotton export corporations, now forming in the United States of America with the object of controlling the raw cotton exports to this country, from exploiting the Lancashire cotton spinners, bearing in mind the insufficiency of raw cotton supplies from Empire-grown and other sources?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I have been asked to reply. Corporations, which may be in process of formation in the United States are quite outside the jurisdiction of His Majesty's Government. The Government are fully alive to the importance of securing an extension of the areas within the Empire from which the cotton industry derives its raw material, and, as the hon. Member is probably aware, the possibilities of an expansion of cotton-growing within the British Empire are being surveyed systematically by the Empire Cotton Growing Committee, appointed by the Board of Trade in 1917, upon which all important sections of the trade are represented.

Oral Answers to Questions — MISS DOUGLAS-PENNANT.

Sir R. THOMAS: (by Private Notice) asked the Leader of the House whether the Government are now prepared, in view of what occurred in the other House last week, to agree to set up a Committee of Inquiry in
respect of Miss Douglas-Pennant's dismissal? [Hon. Members: "No," and "Hear, hear."]

Mr. BONAR LAW: I think it only right in view of the Resolution in another place, that the subject should be considered by the Cabinet. It has not been possible to do so to-day, on account of the pressure of more important work, but if my hon. Friend will put down a question to-morrow or Thursday, I hope to be able to give him a definite answer.

Sir R. THOMAS: I will do that, Mr. Speaker.

SECRET PARTY FUNDS.

PERSONAL STATEMENT.

Brigadier-General CROFT: I desire to ask the indulgence of the House whilst I make a short personal statement. During the Debate last week on the question of secret party funds, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Lane-Mitchell) made certain statements which reflected upon my honour as a soldier and as a Member of this House. If these words had been uttered in the heat of debate, without consideration, obviously I would not have thought it worth while referring to them, but I have had my attention called to the fact that the hon. Gentleman made a very similar personal attack upon me in his constituency. I can only, therefore, assume that his attack in this House was a deliberate one. The words that I complain of are as follows:
And this gentleman of military age came back from the front in the middle of the War. That was a curious thing. An able-bodied man, physically fit, throws up his job at the front and comes back.
A little later the hon. Member said:
I am attacking him because he deserves to be attacked."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th May, 1919, col. 1350.]
In his constituency he used similar words and referred to me as "Mr.," giving the reason that he would never address me by my military rank, although I was unknown to the Gentleman. Until I saw him the other evening I do not think I had ever seen him before. I understand this was a habit of the hon. Member, for he also described his political opponent in the election without giving his rank, and this opponent is a very gallant young officer, Captain Bellamy, who was wounded in the retreat from Mons, and who served right through the War. Military rank is conferred upon soldiers, as
I think most hon. Members of the House are aware, by His Majesty on the advice of the Army Council or the Commander-in-Chief. My honorary rank was bestowed upon me after seven months as a general officer commanding a brigade on active service.
I am concerned with this imputation regarding my action during the War. As to my service in France, I would like to say very little, only this, that I was mobilised on the day the War commenced, and that my active service included 1914 in France and Belgium, 1915, and up to 20th August, 1916. During that time, in addition to continuous trench warfare, I took part in eight offensive operations, in all of which I was congratulated by a senior commander. At the end of the first Somme operations I decided to ask leave to return to the House of Commons, for two reasons: First, I had the great good fortune during the War to have continued as a regimental and brigade commander actually in the trenches for a longer period than any other hon. Member, and I was approached by certain senior officers, who suggested tome that if I could return to the House of Commons I might be able to take a useful part in our Debates with first-hand knowledge. That was the first reason. I was vain enough also to hope that I might be able to assist the Army by taking part in the Debates here, especially on the question of man-power. I was disappointed in that. I failed to make clear what, in my opinion, appeared to be imperative, a recognition of the man-power situation if our Armies were not to be imperilled in the spring of 1918. The second reason why I took this course was that at the end of the first Somme operations I did not agree with the policy of one of my senior officers. Obviously, I am not going to enter into any details of that, or state what that policy was, or my disagreement; but I carried out that policy according to orders, and then, with the additional reason that I have already mentioned, I applied for leave to resign my command and return to Parliament. I was permitted to resign my command, and returned again, with the thanks of the Army Council and the Commander-in-Chief, and I received my honorary rank.
When the Government was reconstructed very shortly afterwards, I believed that the War would be prosecuted
with greater energy. Accordingly, I again offered my services to the War Office. I was offered a home command. Rightly or wrongly, I decided I should be more useful to my country in this House than in a home command which did not appeal to me. Very shortly after that I again volunteered for active service, and on three subsequent occasions applied for a fighting command. I was not content with the failure of the War Office to grant me that active service command immediately, as is known to one or two right hon. Gentlemen in this House whose aid I sought to try to secure my desire. I regret exceedingly having to raise this a question of personal character, but friends of mine told me that as there could be no misconception about what the hon. Member said, if I was not to make this statement my reticence might be misunderstood. I would not ask the hon. Member in what manner his service during the War was more fruitful than my own. May I not presume that everyone who is a patriotic citizen has given all of his personal service, all of his energy, and even of his financial resources, in order to bring about the triumph of our arms With some confidence I leave it to my colleagues to decide as individuals whether the imputation that I, a man of military age, was reluctant to come to grips with the enemy was a just or unjust one.

Colonel C. LOWTHER: May I, Mr. Speaker, ask your ruling——

Mr. SPEAKER: Is it on a point of Order?

Colonel LOWTHER: Yes. May I ask you if a Member of this House makes a cowardly and mendacious——

Mr. SPEAKER: That is a question which ought to have been raised at the moment.

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).

STANDING COMMITTEE B.

Sir Samuel Roberts reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had discharged the following Member from Standing Committee B: Major Court-hope; and had appointed in substitution (for the consideration of the Electricity (Supply) Bill): Mr. Bridgeman.

Report to lie upon the Table.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Pensions Funds (Cardiff) Provisional Order Bill,

Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.

Bill to be read the third time Tomorrow.

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill,

Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.

Bill, as amended, to be considered Tomorrow.

Legal and General Life Assurance Society Bill [Lords],

Reported, with Amendments; Report to lie upon the Table.

Mansfield Railway Bill [Lords],

Hartlepool Corporation Bill [Lords],

Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

London County Council (General Powers) Bill [Lords],

Stourport Gas Bill [Lords],

Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.

That they have agreed to—

Local Government (Ireland) Bill,

Board of Education Scheme (Crossley and Porter Orphan Home and School) Confirmation Bill, without Amendment,

Northampton Gas Bill, with Amendments.

That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to make further provision for the reckoning of service in connection with the present war as service under an indenture of apprenticeship for the purposes of the Law Agents (Scotland) Act, 1873." [Law Agents Apprenticeship (War Service) (Scotland) Bill [Lords.]

Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to amend the Weights and Measures Acts, 1878 to 1904, in relation to instruments for measuring leather by superficial area." [Weights and Measures (Leather Measurement) Bill [Lords.]

Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to make further provision with respect to wireless telegraphy on ships." [Merchant Shipping (Wireless Telegraphy)) Bill [Lords.]

Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to incorporate the St. Just (Falmouth) Ocean Wharves and Railways Company and to empower that company to construct wharves and railways in the county of Cornwall; and for other purposes." [St. Just (Falmouth) Ocean Wharves and Railways Bill [Lords.]

Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to constitute the Corporation of Nuneaton the burial board for the borough; to increase the number of the council; to make better provision for the health, local government, and improvement of the borough; to confer further powers upon the corporation with respect to the supply of water and electricity; and for other purposes." [Nuneaton Improvement Bill [Lords.]

And also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to provide for the transfer to the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the borough of Blackpool of the undertaking of the Blackpool and Fleetwood Tramroad Company and to empower the said Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses to construct additional tramways and a street improvement; and for other purposes." [Blackpool Improvement Bill [Lords.]

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

St. Just (Falmouth) Ocean Wharves and Railways Bill [Lords],

Nuneaton Corporation Bill [Lords],

Blackpool Improvement Bill [Lords],

Read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

Orders of the Day — FEDERAL DEVOLUTION.

CREATION OF SUBORDINATE LEGISLATURES.

Major E. WOOD: I beg to move,
That, with a view to enabling the Imperial Parliament to devote more attention to the general interests of the United Kingdom and, in collaboration with the other Governments of the Empire, to matters of common Imperial concern, this House is of opinion that the time has come for the creation of subordinate legislatures within the United Kingdom, and that to this end the Government, without prejudice to any proposals it may have to make with regard to Ireland, should forthwith appoint a Parliamentary body to consider and report—

(1)upon a measure of Federal Devolution applicable to England, Scotland, and Ireland, defined in its general outlines by existing differences in law and administration between the three countries;
(2)upon the extent to which these differences are applicable to Welsh conditions and requirements; and
(3)upon the financial aspects and requirements of the measure."

In moving the Motion which stands on the Paper in my name and that of another hon. Friend (Mr. Murray Macdonald) may I say that the subject, of course, is not a new one. It came before the notice of a great many hon. Members in the last Parliament, and although it was never discussed, I think, on the floor of this House so late as, I think, 5th March, it was a subject of discussion in the other House, when there was a very full Debate upon it. I do not intend to refer to that Debate beyond saying that it was an occasion of a speech by the Lord Chancellor, and in regard to that I think it is just to inquire how far that speech should rightly be taken as representing the views of His Majesty's Government, or how far it merely represented the individual opinion of the Lord Chancellor. As a good many of us know, the opinions expressed by the Lord Chancellor on the subject were at complete variance with what are the known sympathies and indeed beliefs of more than one member of the Government, and are extremely difficult of reconciliation with what was the opinion of the Prime Minister given to an important and influential deputation which waited upon him on the subject in the course of last summer.
4.0 P.M.
I suppose that this Motion commands a very general measure of support in a great many quarters, and for a great
many different reasons. I will begin by telling the House what is in my opinion the dominant consideration that leads me to recommend it to the consideration of the House. I think that all hon. Members were struck— of course it was not new, though it was forcibly expressed—by some reflections of the hon. Member for Glamorgan (Mr. Hartshorn) in a speech which he made recently upon the state of Ireland. He said—I do not quote his words—that the most potent incentive among the people of these Islands to direct action would be any diminution in the confidence that they felt in the institutions under which they live. I do not think it is too much to say that, in the times immediately in front of us, what may tilt the scale between civilisation and disruption may be the confidence that our people have in their institutions. That confidence, let us be very sure of it, depends upon the ability and efficiency with which those institutions do their work. Therefore, if it be at all true, as I think it is, that this House has receded in public estimation, the case that I wish to submit to hon. Members is that that is due to the fact that we have been asking too much of our machinery. I do not want to exaggerate in any way the case that I wish to make, but I think it is safe to say that there is no department either of our executive, our administrative or our legislative life that is not showing signs of what I may call wear and depreciation. It is quite customary to hear deplored in this House the evil results of what is called the lack of Cabinet government. To that cause is attributed, for example, the extravagance, the divergent policy of the Government, and the failures to which Governments are subject I take it that there are those who are sanguine enough to suppose that the breakdown of Cabinet government is merely due to the action of this Government, is merely due to war conditions; and that if the Government chose, and if and when war conditions pass, it would be at our own option when we reverted to the earlier system of Cabinet Government. I believe that those who hold that view are thoroughly wrong, and I think so for this reason. Even if the number of important Government Departments had not grown so numerous that during the War we required a War Cabinet, and before the War, I think I am right in saying, we required an Inner Cabinet
—even if that were not the case, the Departmental pressure on Ministers to-day has so grown in intensity that a Minister tends more and more to be immersed in the day-to-day work of his Department. He is every day faced with the dilemma of either having to neglect his Department or to neglect the House of Commons, and most of them are bound, perforce, as we know only too well, to neglect the House of Commons. Unless it be possible to devise some means of squeezing forty-eight hours out of twenty-four, I submit—and I believe Cabinet Ministers will be the first to agree—that it is almost impossible for a Departmental chief to form an intelligent opinion upon one-half of the subjects that come before him in his capacity as a member of the Cabinet. For that reason, I submit that we are not likely to find a remedy in reversion to the old methods. Incidentally, that, of course, constitutes a complete revolution in our governing system. Instead of the collective co-operation and responsibility of a Cabinet, we have now got to a great extent Government by semi-independent Departments, with an appeal to a Committee of Ministers to settle their differences, or, if not to a Committee of Ministers, to some outstanding personality such as the Prime Minister. That is a revolution in our system of government. All that is true, I think, of the Cabinet and of the Government, and it is no less true of individual Members. I put this point in all seriousness, that if representative institutions are to remain a reality, and if Members of Parliament are to be something more than machines to register the decrees of right hon. Gentlemen on this bench or on that, they must be able to keep in touch with their constituents, and to form some sort of judgment upon the mass of material that from day to day comes before them. And yet every Member of Parliament knows that that is impossible, and hardly anyone attempts it. If he did, I do not think I should be wrong if I said that he would within twenty-four hours, or forty-eight hours at the most, fall a victim to what I might call intellectual indigestion. The thing simply cannot be done, and we all of us know it.
I think I shall have carried the general sense of the House with me thus far. But even if our domestic business were to remain at what it was before the War, and we all know that it has immensely in-creased to-day and is likely to go on in-
creasing, the problem would be grave enough to justify us in asking for an inquiry into the possibilities of a better system. But we all know that there is much more in it than that. The War, and all the international problems that are its legacy, and the teaching of the War, is going to have this effect, among others: It is going to make the ordinary man take a vastly more live and continuous interest in foreign policy than he ever took before. Every man and every woman now knows what war means, and, in so far as wars are the result of bad diplomacy, every man and woman are going to see to it that they use their influence to make diplomacy good. That will mean interest in foreign policy. And there is a further consideration. I am very glad to see my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary in the House, because I am sure he will agree with what I am going to say. [AN HON. MEMBER: "He is at the Admiralty now!"] I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon; he moves from one office to another so easily. At all events, he will remember, and will sympathise. Within the next few months, or within the next year, we in this House are going to be face to face with the consideration of a great many questions of immediate and common concern to ourselves and the Dominions. There are questions of defence, questions of trade, of naturalisation, of land settlement; and in regard to all of these, even without reckoning Indian reforms, Egypt, and so forth, the Dominions will be anxious to work and to build in conjunction with ourselves. But we must have time to do it. I have heard my right hon. Friend say—and I believe every other ex-Colonial Secretary has said the same thing—that when Dominion representatives come to this country they find it hard to understand how immersed we are in what to them seem to be our parochial concerns. If we are prepared to attend to-these matters, we can build a structure in common. If we are not, we shall only have ourselves to thank if they proceed on the business without us, and the work is conducted independently of us. I do not say a word about the possibilities of the future Imperial Constitution. In my own belief, if that comes, it will rather be the outcome of spontaneous growth than of conscious constitution-building. But this I would say: that if ever there be an essential preliminary it is that this Parliament should be put as much in a position of freedom from the local concerns of Scotland, Ire-
land, Wales, and England, as the Dominion Parliaments of Canada and of the Commonwealth of Australia, for example, are with regard to the local concerns of, say, Manitoba or New South Wales.
That, I think, is an essential precedent condition. To meet this condition of things it is, I think, not untrue to say that within the limits of our present Constitution we have tried almost every device that the wit of man can suggest. I regret that my right hon. Friend who generally sits beside me here to keep me in the path in which I should go is not here to-day. He, of course, is not conscious of this problem at all, because he has a simple remedy, which is to repeal most of the existing laws and pass no new ones; and, of course, on those terms these problems cease to be vexatious. But to most of us the problem is not so simple, and in order to try to meet it we have moved uneasily during the last few years under the restrictions on Debate, the substitution of Orders in Council for legislation, boards of control, and, last but not least, Grand Committees. I really do not think it is necessary for me to labour the point in regard to Grand Committees. I was amazed to hear my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House say the other day that on the whole he was very satisfied with the way in which the Grand Committees had worked. I do not think he can have sat on a Grand Committee. If he asked the opinion of any private Member who not only has to sit on Grand Committees and put in such spare time as he can in the House, but is expected by the Whips to be often in two places at once, and is only able to be in one place, the Grand Committee, by withdrawing himself from business of first-class importance here, I do not think he would have found support for his view in the minds of many hon. Members. After all, let me remind hon. Gentlemen that a good deal turns upon what is meant by working well. I have no doubt that the Grand Committees are turning out legislation. So does a sausage machine turn out minced meat. But the point is whether that is not being done by withdrawing Members and by withdrawing subjects from this House and committing them to a handful of Members upstairs, and whether that is not a cost absolutely out of proportion to the results obtained. I believe that it must produce results which are disastrous in this House. Therefore, my conclusion as to that is that it is as groundless to
suppose that we can remedy our defects by tinkering in this way or that with our present system as it is to suppose that you can make a horse pull more than a certain load by merely refitting the harness in which he pulls it. It is not the way he is pulling that is wrong, it is the load you are asking him to pull. If that be so, what we suggest is that we should inquire and inform ourselves as to the extent to which it may be possible to delegate a good deal of the business that we do here to subordinate assemblies, perhaps in: different parts of the country.
Our business, as I see it, falls into three pretty obvious divisions. First of all, as to the business described as being essentially central, such business, for example, as defence, Foreign Office, Colonial Office, Government of India, finance, and so on. Then you have business which is definitely local that might be summed up under the expression of local government, licensing, education, land questions, agriculture, and so on. Again, I do not give an exhaustive list. Then you have the three classes as to which there might be some debate as to whether they should be local or central, and of which the chief is, of course, industrial questions. That, I admit quite frankly, is a subject for debate, although I hold a strong opinion that these questions should be treated centrally, but that is a matter for argument. I would suggest one other reason to the House why I think hon. Members should take these proposals into very serious consideration. I do not think there is anything much more important in the consideration of our institutions than that of arriving at an agreed settlement of that old problem of the Second Chamber. Lord Bryce recently presided over a Committee, and they have reported, but I have not read all their words of wisdom, although I have informed myself, and I have no doubt they have produced conclusions which are both valuable and wise. What I want to suggest is that, be those conclusions good or less good, the difficulty of arriving at an agreed settlement of the Second Chamber controversy is not so much the merits or demerits of this or that scheme, but whether you reform the House of Lords or not under your arrangement, the Second Chamber is going to remain. This body is charged with dealing with the very matters around which the most acute political controversies centre. Under the sug-
gested reorganisation, most of the matters which have occasioned the most acute political controversy would disappear from the purview of the United Kingdom Parliament, and the way would be less proportionately more clear for an agreed settlement of that problem which would command the assent of all parties.
Just a few words with regard to two of the main objections and difficulties. The first point is that raised in the Amendment of some of my hon. Friends who in this matter fear the predominance of England. For my own part, I have no sort of objection to including their Amendment, which asks for inquiry into that question in the main Motion. I think their fears are groundless, and I would use my utmost endeavour if it became a matter of practical policy to defeat it. I am most anxious to have it inquired into, because I think that would be the best method of defeating it My hon. Friends will find no apposition from me with regard to the Amendment they are seeking. Again I say that I do not realise their fears. Let me ask in what way will Scotland be worse off under the poposed arrangement than to-day? The only difference would be that she would obtain complete control of her own local concerns, and she would retain complete control and exactly the same proportion of control over United Kingdom affairs. It would rather be for England that I should fear if national talent were to be confined more narrowly to national channels. When I look round the House, if that were to be so we should lose the services of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Duncairn Division (Sir E. Carson), and all those lights would disappear from the service of England. Therefore I cannot share the fears of my hon. Friends.
In conclusion, let me turn to what no doubt is to a great many of us one, if not the most serious, difficulty in this matter, and that is the question of Ireland. I desire to say what I wish to say to the House with perfect frankness, and I hope without offence. First of all, let me say that I do not in any way underestimate the difficulty, but I would begin by urging the importance in that matter of maintaining our perspective. Let us remember that the population of the United Kingdom is 41,000,000, and the population of Ireland is 4,500,000. Let us also remember that if we come to think that a general case was
made out for the United Kingdom it would be just as unreasonable to debar the United Kingdom from the advantages of the change because there was an Irish difficulty as it would be to force a change upon the United Kingdom that was not in its interests merely as an expedient for turning an Irish corner.
My first plea is for perspective. Having said this, I state quite clearly that if the conditions in Ireland, or the greater part of Ireland, are what I believe them to be, it would be merely shutting our eyes to facts to suppose that any constitutional plant would flourish unless the soil in which it is planted has some respect for law as the elementary principle of social life. Therefore I agree with those who say that our first duty in this House must be to assist those who are charged with the restoration of law and order in Ireland. But while I say that that is our first duty, I say with equal and perhaps greater emphasis that it could not be and must not be our whole duty towards Ireland, and in my judgment we should be mistaking the temper of this country and our Dominions most fatally if we suppose that they would be satisfied with anything short of a definitely constructive policy for Ireland, and that is a remedy for a situation that cannot be indefinitely prolonged. Therefore I would urge that in this matter we should make our position plain that in restoring, as we intend to restore, law and order, we should be doing that in the interests chiefly of Ireland herself, in order that at the earliest moment she might qualify to enjoy the same rights of self-government that we are prepared to confer upon England and Scotland.
I do not blink the fact for a moment that it may very likely be the case that the predominant elements in Ireland at this moment would wholly reject Home Rule proposals. That is a fact of which my Noble Friend the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil) has often reminded us, and it is a fact as to which I am not sure whether my right hon. Friend who sits below me, in view of the language he has used in the past, would wholly support that view. I might say in passing, in order to make my own position perfectly plain, that exactly in the same way as I regard the question of the division of England as an open question and one for inquiry, so I regard the question of the division of Ireland into separate federal units as also open for inquiry. I have my own views about it, and I should
do all I could to make those views prevail, but that is a question which is open for the most full and frank inquiry. At its worst I do not think we should have achieved any solid gain unless we had done two things. First of all, unless we had secured the general assent of Great Britain to this principle and had made it plain to Ireland that the measure of what was the right policy for Ireland was not simply the shifting test of what Ireland wanted. The day before yesterday they wanted a Home Rule Bill; yesterday it was Dominion status, and to-day it is a republic; and you cannot make that shifting test the sole test of your Irish policy. Therefore the alternative test—and this would be the first proposition I would wish Great Britain to give a considered assent to—is that the test must be what is right and possible for the United Kingdom. If it were possible to make a clear definition on principle and make a firm offer to Ireland, that would be there for her to take as soon as she chose; but what I would hope to achieve as the second result of value which would be to remove the question of Irish policy from that most fatal position in which it has been for the last thirty years of being subject to inflation or deflation in this House on no principle but as the result of political action. That would be a really solid gain.
I think that the real ground of opposition to Home Rule Bills in the past and other Home Rule Bills in the future would be the treatment of Ireland in isolation. I have always held the view—and it has been shared in all parts of this House—that the isolated treatment of Ireland inevitably and largely increases the danger of separation, for the simple reason that demands pressed against a central Parliament by a single subordinate assembly become absurd, silly, and impossible when you are dealing with one central and several subordinate assemblies. If I may take a homely similie it would be this: Every parent will support the view that it is a much more difficult thing to bring up an only child than it is to bring up one of several children when the other children are always unconsciously helping the parents to keep what would be a single child if there were no others—well, I would say the troublesome child, in order. I have tried, without being unduly wearisome, to lay some of the main considerations by which those of us are moved who support this Resolution. I am bound to say I think on general grounds
a case for inquiry is amply made out. The War has made a great modification, of the whole position, notably in the field of finance, and therefore it is essential, if we are to know where we stand, that we should have a full, independent and careful inquiry. The ordinary voter, I think is ready enough to appreciate the results of bad government, but in practice-he is slow to diagnose the disease, and the-duty of diagnosing disease lies upon Parliament and on those who form and guide political opinion in this House and in the country. This is, I believe, a first step towards finding a remedy for some of the evils under which we are labouring, and it is further laying the foundation of a more vigorous national and imperial life on these grounds. I commend the Motion to the consideration of the House.

Mr. MURRAY MACDONALD: I rise to second the Motion that has been so well and ably laid before the House by my hon. Friend. The Motion rests on the opinion that Parliament has more work to do than it can adequately perform. My hon. Friend has dealt with that so far as it relates to our present situation. But the congestion of business is not a matter of to-day or of yesterday, and I want to say a few words on the history of this subject. If we look back for a moment to the eighteenth century we see no signs of Parliament being then over weighted by its work. It was equal to the task imposed upon it. But there was hardly any part of that task which was concerned with the passing of measures of legislation. If we except the Act of Union between England and Scotland, it is true to say that no great measure of legislation affecting either our civil or our political interests dates from that century The whole attention of Parliament was concentrated on questions of administration, and it was success or failure in dealing with those questions that determined the fate of Governments. This was the situation in. the eighteenth century. Since then a great and stupendous change has taken place in the affairs of this country, and in the work of Parliament. That change, I think, has been due to three main causes. The first is the growth of the Empire and of the responsibilities of Parliament in relation to-it; the second, the enormous development of our industrial life, and the constantly-increasing demands for legislation which has sprung out of and accompanied
those developments; and the third, the change, nothing less than revolutionary in its nature, which has taken place in the ideas of men with regard to the sphere of government and legislation. These causes have been adding for now nearly 100 years, with constantly accumulating power and effect, to the mass and the volume of business of Parliament.
I pass over the growth of the Empire with three statements which I believe to be indisputable facts. The first of those statements is that, quite apart from the strictly domestic affairs of the United Kingdom—putting them entirely out of the account—the affairs of the Empire, taken by themselves, have imposed on Parliament in our time a responsibility incomparably greater than has ever been imposed on a single Legislature in the whole history of the world. The second is that this responsibility presses more and more heavily upon us every day as days go by; and the third is that we shall not long continue to hold the Empire together unless we give more time to its affairs and more of that sympathy which can only grow from a knowledge of the conditions of the people which is impossible to us in the situation in which we now stand. I pass to the change in the nature of the work of Parliament as affected by the growing demands for legislation. I have already said that the work of Parliament in the eighteenth century was limited to questions connected with administration. With the passing of the Reform Act of 1832 those questions have retreated more and more into the background, they are placed no longer in a position of first importance, and the responsibility of Parliament has been more and more taken up by questions of legislation. I do not wait to consider whether the interests of the country have suffered from the fact that the time and attention of Parliament have been so completely absorbed by legislation as to prevent it exercising real supervision over administration, although I have a very clear and decided opinion on the subject. My present concern is with the fact that the growth of legislative work has been the main cause of the congestion of the business of Parliament. The stages of that growth are clearly marked out by successive extensions of the franchise. It was natural and inevitable that this should be so. As each new body of electors was
brought within the framework of the Constitution new demands for changed conditions of our life arose, and the inability of Parliament to cope with those demands became every year more and more obvious. Formal complaints of this congestion and of its injurious effects date back as far as the year 1837. In that year the first of a long series of Select Committees was appointed to consider the subject and report on means by which the transaction of business could be expedited. If anyone desires to obtain evidence, he can turn to these Reports. But there is other and certainly not less convincing evidence of them. There is hardly one of our great men in the last eighty years of our history, quite irrespective of party, who has not drawn attention to the need of some change in our mode of working. I could give many quotations from speeches to prove this, but one is sufficient for my purpose. In 1846 Sir Robert Peel, one of the great figures in our Parliamentary history, in a record of an interview which he had with Mr. Gladstone, is reported to have spoken of "the increased multiplication of details in public business, and the enormous task imposed on the available time and strength by the work of attendance in the House of Commons. He said it was extremely adverse to the growth of greatness among our public men, and that the mass of public business increased so fast that he could not tell what it would end in, and would not venture to speculate even for a few years on the mode of administering public affairs. The consequences were already manifest in its being not well done." If this was the state of things in 1846, "what may be said of the state of things to-day? I shall not attempt to describe the difference. But I would ask Members to pause for a moment. I would like to put several questions to hon. Members in this House. Is there a single man amongst us who does not feel that he is overweighted—I might safely say over whelmed—as a Member of this House by the burden of his responsibility? Is there a single man who feels he can keep abreast with the work? Is there one amongst us who, in the immense multiplication of detail that daily absorbs and exhausts his attention, does not feel that he is in danger of losing all hold of guiding principles, even to the very idea of it? Is there anyone who does not feel that his work as a Member is becoming less and less moral and more and more purely mechanical in its nature? So long as these questions can be asked with even the semblance of justifica-
tion, we may be sure it will become increasingly difficult to get men who care either for their moral or their intellectual integrity to consent to serve their country in Parliament. That is all I want to say as to congestion. It is not a thing of today nor of yesterday. It is an evil which has been slowly and almost insensibly accumulating upon us for at least eighty years, and it is an evil which we must in some way get rid of.
I turn now to consider the remedy. Two alternative ways, and two only, have been suggested for dealing with it. The first is a change in the Rules of Procedure regulating the transaction of business in this House; and the second is embodied in the Motion which we are now considering—namely, devolution of function. As to the first, if we could assume that the business of Parliament was fixed and stationary, we might perhaps not unreasonably hold that it could be made to answer its purpose. But we cannot. We have made I do not know how many changes in procedure during the last forty years, and all have failed to accomplish their purpose. The mass of business has steadily out grown our capacity to deal with it. Without claiming any deep insight into the future, and without taking any very Comprehensive views of the state of things in the Empire, we can confidently say the business of Parliament is not likely to go on accumulating more slowly in the years that lie in front of us than it has done in the years that are behind us.
Before passing to consider the second alternative, there is one excrescence of our Constitution which has been growing to alarming proportions in recent years. I refer to the devolution of legislative powers of our public Departments. That is a devolution that is going on on a vast and ever-increasing scale. No measure of legislation of large general importance has passed through Parliament during the last twenty years which has not contained provision for referring controversial points to public Departments to settle by means of Orders in Council or Provisional Orders, or by other indirect methods, and the larger and more controversial the points the greater has been the temptation to provide for their settlement in this way. I do not blame anyone for it. It was natural that it should be so. Business pressed, and what is more natural than that the difficult parts of it, demanding more time than could be spared to them, should be handed over to public Depart-
ments to settle? But who denies that it is an evil? If we add to that the growing habit, due to precisely the same causes, of legislation by reference, then under it our system of law has become hopelessly complicated, and its administration more and more difficult and uncertain, and under it, moreover, the powers of Departments are rapidly growing. I make no reflection on the Departments. The work has been imposed on them, and it would be an injustice not to admit that it has been generally carried out in a fair, moderate, and judicial spirit. But, none the less, the thing is an evil, and unless some more legitimate form of devolution can be devised these Departments will in course of time become as prolific in the issue of legislative enactments as Parliament itself.
In the operative part of the Motion it is suggested that we should adopt a scheme of Federal Devolution applicable to England, Scotland, and Ireland, and determined in its general outlines by existing differences in law and administration between the three countries. The use of the word "Federal" to describe the nature of the scheme has, I am told, given rise to some doubts and misgivings about it. In one fundamentally important fact our Constitution, as it is now, is held, and rightly held, to be superior to any federal constitution. In a federal constitution, strictly so called, the legal sovereignty is divided between the central or federal Government and the Governments of the several peoples who have entered into the federation, and this seems always to be a source of weakness in the federal constitution. In the case of our Constitution, on the other hand, full and undivided sovereignty resides in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and a change which would parcel out this sovereignty between the central and the subordinate legislatures would be accepted, if at all, with extreme reluctance, and only because the evils resulting from it would be less than those we have to face under existing conditions. The change which the Motion proposes would not have this effect at all. Carry through the change to-day, and the legal competence of this Parliament to undo to-morrow what it has done to-day would remain absolutely unimpaired. This, I think, ought to be obvious enough. On the other hand, it ought not to be forgotten, as it too often is in arguments on this subject, that the British Constitution has never been and was not intended to be completely unitary in its character.
As it is on this fact that the operative part of the Motion ultimately rests for its justification, let me try to make it clear by attempting to define what are the separate capacities in which Parliament, as we know it, now acts, and let me also try to make clear upon what principle it is that we propose to distribute powers as between the central and the subordinate legislatures. The capacities in which Parliament acts are four. In the first place, it acts as the local legislature for the peoples of England, Scotland and Ireland, regulating their severally distinct and strictly domestic interests. In the second place, still as a local legislature, regulating the interests common to the three peoples. In these two capacities the legislative functions of Parliament correspond roughly to the legislative functions of the provisional and central legislatures in the Dominions of the Empire. In the third capacity it acts as the presiding authority over the great Dependencies, Protectorates and Crown Colonies. In the fourth capacity it stands before the world as the supreme presiding authority over the British Empire as a whole, ultimately responsible for its destinies. Our proposal is that it should hand over its functions in respect of the first of these capacities to subordinate legislatures in the three countries. Within a certain area of interests neither small nor unimportant, but the same in the three countries, we legislate now for each country as a unit by itself, and each country has its own separate judiciary and its own separate administrative system charged with the responsibility of giving effect to its own separate laws.
There is nothing therefore in the proposal that is not consistent either with the spirit or the working of the Constitution as it is now, and it could be carried out without any large or material disturbance of our present system of government. Why then should we hesitate to free Parliament, by the adoption of this proposal, from some portion of the impossible task which the conditions of our time impose upon it. I know of only one objection which has been seriously urged against it. It is that there has been a movement, both in our life and in the life of all the great States of the world, towards an ever deepening and extending union, and that the interests of a peaceful and progressive life are everywhere bound up with the furtherance of this movement
and that the proposal we are considering is opposed to it and goes in the direction of separation. If I thought this was a well-grounded objection, I should not be to-day pleading for the adoption of this proposal. But let us consider it. The union between the three Kingdoms is concerned with four spheres of interest and it has not operated in the same way in all four. In respect of the domestic interests common to the three peoples, and in respect of their relations with the other peoples of the Empire and of the world outside the Empire it has been a completely integrating union. In these three respects the three peoples have been as one. If we attempted to impose the English system on the peoples of Scotland so that there would be one administration common to both countries, we know that the attempt would break the Union. The attempt has not been made in the case of the Dominions, and the union between us and them is due to the fact that it has not been made. It was made in the case of the American Colonies, and we lost them. It has been made in the case of Ireland, and Ireland remains to-day the one outstanding failure in the government of the peoples of the Empire. To give to peoples the right to control the conditions of their own domestic life is not to pave the way for separation. It is to recognise one essential condition of a real and abiding union between them.
I proceed now to consider the two further points in the Resolution which demand a few words of explanation. The first relates to Wales. She forms at present an integral portion of England. With a few very minor exceptions, the same law and the same administration runs through both countries. How far it is consistent with the interests of Wales that she should have a legislature of her own, possessing the same powers as the legislature of the other countries, I do not know. In the Resolution the question is left an open one, and it is the opinion of Wales which must ultimately decide it. The second point relates to finance, and it presents us with the only real difficulty in the way of the scheme. It is easy to map out the areas within which the Parliament of the United Kingdom on the one-hand and the subordinate legislatures on the other would severally exercise their legislative and administrative powers. They are, as a matter of fact, already clearly marked out. But that is not the case in regard to finance. Putting aside
certain small exceptions which are to be found in Ireland, the same finance law runs through the three countries. They are all taxed alike, and the difficulty is that it is impossible so to disentangle our finances as to allow the subordinate legislatures certain definite sources of revenue which would be equal to their requirements while we reserve to the Imperial Parliament certain other sources which would be equal to its requirements. A way out of the difficulty can, I believe, be found—not, I admit, an altogether satisfactory way, but one which has been found to work in other countries where legislative and administrative powers are distributed between central and subordinate legislatures.
5.0 P.M
Perhaps I may say a word in regard to the Amendment standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for the Camlachie Division of Glasgow (Mr. Mackinder), although my hon. Friend who moved the Motion said what was perhaps all that is necessary to say in regard to it. My hon. Friend thinks that it is desirable to divide England into provinces, each with its subordinate legislature in order to avoid the inconvenience which might result from the great predominance of one partner in the Federation. I do not know to what inconveniences my hon. Friend refers, nor do I quite understand from the Resolution whether the inconveniences are to be felt by the people of Scotland or by the people of England, or by this Parliament. I cannot decide what are the conveniences or how the conveniences are to make themselves felt, and who and what is to be exposed to these inconveniences. Whatever my hon. Friend may have in his mind, I feel sure that when he comes to consider the inconveniences that would result from the dividing up of England into provinces he will find that they are immensely greater than any inconveniences that would result from maintaining England as a single unit. I have explained why Wales does not appear in the first Section of our Resolution, and that I think will be a sufficient answer to the Amendment in the names of two hon. Members for Welsh constituencies. This concludes what I have to say on the terms of the Motion as it stands on the Paper. Would that it was all I was called upon to say with regard to them.
But Ireland rises up against me. One section of the people of that country constituting a large majority of the whole is
in a state of open rebellion against union with the peoples of England, Scotland and Wales in any shape or form. Seventy Members of Parliament elected for constituencies in that country by the same franchise and under the same law as we have been elected for our constituencies, refuse to take their seats in this House, and apparently with the full consent and approval of their legally constituted electors have openly maintained the right to set up a free and independent republic in their country. Another section, much less numerous but very powerful, tell us that they are entirely satisfied with the union which exists, and that they desire no change in it. A third section, still less numerous, and far less powerful, though not negligible, takes up a position between these two extremes, and urges us for the sake of peace and conciliation to grant to Ireland what is known as Dominion powers of Government. This, I think, is an adequate account of the conflict of opinions prevailing in Ireland at tins moment, and I am driven by it to admit that there is no section of opinion in that country favourable to the proposal embodied in this Motion. What, then, are we to do? Out of the confusion and uncertainty that prevails in that country and in our relations with it, one thing that is certain quite clearly emerges and that is that the Irish question cannot be allowed to remain just where it is. It is not merely that it is poisoning the life of the people of Ireland from one end of that country Lo another, without distinction of class, interest or creed, but it is poisoning our life as well. There is not a single relation of that life that does not feel and suffer from its evil influences. It weakens us here at home. It injuriously affects our relations with the self-governing Dominions. It is at this moment materially weakening the influence of our power in India and Egypt. It prejudices our relations with the United States and it unquestionably weakens our influence among the nations of the world.
The Irish question cannot be allowed to remain where it is. What, then, are we to do with it? Ruling out as impossible the suggestion that we should do nothing, three alternatives present themselves. Either (1) we can yield to the demand of the majority of the Irish people and concede independence to Ireland, or (2) we can grant her the powers of Dominion government, or, (3) we can retain her as an integral part of the United Kingdom
and grant her such legislative and administrative powers as in accordance with the terms of the Motion it is proposed to grant to England and Scotland. I think this exhausts the possible alternatives before us. As to the first, the demand for independence was originally made by a small body of men holding extreme views, and, if we may judge from their writing and speeches, totally unacquainted with affairs. To this small body there has been added in the last three years a constantly growing number of adherents until at last the body has attained the formidable proportions which we see to-day. These new adherents are, not originally men of extreme views. They adopt these views not because they were predisposed to favour or support them, but because they became more and more profoundly discontented with the existing condition of things. That is not a mere guess or speculation on my part, but it is a legitimate inference from acknowledged facts. On several occasions during the past three years the movement was obviously dying down, and adherents were deserting them, when some unhappy incident occurred, connected with Government, which restored to it all and more than its old strength and proportions. I am not going to argue with the men who make this claim. The claim appears to me to be one inconsistent with the moral and material interests of Ireland as it is with those of Great Britain, and against it we have to present an inexorable front. But this does not exhaust our duty in the matter. We cannot govern Ireland by the sword. This is impossible, more clearly impossible for us than for any people on the face of the earth, and more clearly impossible to-day than at any past time in the history of our relations with that country. Something we must do, something in accordance with the principles whose application in other parts of the Empire has allayed discontents as widespread, exorcised opinions as extreme, and which in our experiences have never yet failed in their healing efficacy.
This brings me to the second alternative as to whether we should confer upon Ireland the powers of Dominion Government. To this it has been objected that if we did we should be conferring on Ireland the power at any moment of cutting the connection between her and us, and therefore it is impossible for us to grant such powers to her. This line of reasoning astonishes
me. That the one and only sure means by which, as a very full and ample experience teaches us, the people of this Empire are held together in the bonds of affection and interest would, if applied to Ireland, be the means of disrupting the Empire, I for my part refuse to believe. It is, moreover, a very dangerous and very untrue line of argument to follow. It is as if we said to the people of Canada and Australia, South Africa and New Zealand: "We have conferred upon you powers of government which enable you at any moment to declare your independence, and in order to maintain the integrity of the Empire we would, if we could, withdraw those powers from you." It is an argument as dangerous as it is false. Self-government within the Empire applied as we have applied it has been the means, and practically the sole means, of saving the Empire. I do not, therefore, think that we ought to reject on any ground of principle the proposal that Dominion powers of government should be conferred on Ireland.
Let us look at the proposal a little more in detail. If Federal Government on the lines suggested in the Motion was in operation, Ireland as well as England and Scotland would have within the sphere of general legislation and administration all the essential powers of the Dominion Government, but within the region of finance it would not have those powers. What the claim for Dominion government in Ireland practically amounts to is that she should have the same unrestricted powers over finance that are possessed by the Dominions. To this claim I say quite briefly and boldly that whatever may be its abstract merits the thing would not work. The conditions that make it workable in the case of the Dominions are not the conditions under which it must work, if at all, in Ireland. I make that statement knowing that it will not be, and ought not to be, accepted on my authority, and knowing that I cannot prove it in detail here and now. It is a point which must be gone into by the Committee, which I hope will be set up as a result of this discussion. But something I ought to say upon it. Let me take the Income Tax to illustrate what I mean, and let me assume that Ireland has the same unrestricted power over that tax as Canada has. Let us see what is the difference in the working of this power as between Canada and Ireland. In Canada the income of the Income Tax payer is
derived almost exclusively from Canadian sources, from sources which come within the direct supervision and control of the Dominion Government. In these conditions there can be no confusion in the working of two separate and distinct Income Tax systems as between Canada and us, but the conditions between Ireland and us arc very different. Many Irishmen derive portions of their income from British sources, and not a few British derive portions of their income from Irish sources.
How, then, are you going to work two separate and independent Income Tax systems, both largely concerned with the same incomes and under which taxes which would certainly vary in rate, and in limits of exemption and abatement? It would be impossible.
I turn now to the third and last alternative. Is there any hope that that would be accepted by Irishmen as a means of conciliation between them and us? That depends on two things. The first is that we should be able to convince Irishmen that the powers to be conferred upon them are real and large powers, and that the restrictions upon these powers are not capriciously imposed, but are such as the actual moral and material relations between them and us impose upon them and us alike; and, second, that these powers should be exercised over an undivided Ireland. The two things must go together. We will not undermine the evil influences of the extreme men in that country unless they do go together. Unless they do go together you will not detach the men of moderation and reason from the support which they are now giving to the men of extreme views. The one hope for the future of Ireland and for the future relations of that country with this country is that you should succeed in detaching them from that support. I wish that I could have stopped there, but I cannot. If there is any truth in the idea that the success of the proposal embodied in this Motion depends, in so far as it relates to Ireland, on that country being treated as a single unit, then that success depends on the attitude of Ulster. They have taken up two grounds of objection to proposals of a similar kind which were to apply to Ireland alone. The first is that these would drive them out of their British and Imperial citizenship. The second is that they cannot trust themselves to the sense
of justice of an authority composed of their fellow countrymen or consent to subject themselves to it.
The first relates to a matter of fact, and is easy to dispose of. Under the Home Rule Act Irishmen and Ulstermen are deprived of a very material part of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom, but under the proposal which we are now considering they would not be deprived of any of these rights. They would remain in as full and complete enjoyment of them as the people of England and Scotland. So that objection disappears. The other is a matter not of fact but of opinion. I express no judgment on this matter. 'No judgment of mine would have or ought to have any weight. It would be presumption on my part to expect that it would or should. But there are two reflections I venture to make upon it. The first is that if impartial justice is ever to prevail in Ireland, it must be there, as elsewhere, by the free opinion of all sections of her people. This is the only means by which justice spreads and grows. The other reflection carries me back to the situation in which the British Empire now stands, as it is affected by the Irish question. This question, we know, affects profoundly the internal and external relations of the Empire. Ulster-men are loyal subjects of the Empire. No one disputes it. But does not this loyalty impose on them some obligation to help us towards a settlement of what is admittedly undermining the influence of the Empire? The question in its narrower relations affects them more closely than it does us. Yet in its larger and wider relations it affects both them and us alike. It is for them to answer. For my part, I believe that the acceptance of this proposal lies deep in the truest interest of Ireland, of Great Britain, and the Empire, and in that belief I second the Motion.

Sir EDWARD CARSON: The latter part of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman seems to me to widen very much the original discussion inaugurated by my hon. Friend (Major E. Wood). I had not the faintest idea that this Debate was going to turn into anything like a Home Rule Debate on the old lines. The right hon. Gentleman has suggested that one of the questions that will come before the Commission which he proposes to set up is the question of granting Dominion Home Rule to Ireland.

Mr. MACDONALD: No; I definitely ruled Dominion Home Rule out.

Sir E. CARSON: I do not know why so much of his speech was devoted to the question of eliminating an Irish Republic, and now he says that he has also eliminated Dominion Home Rule. Do I understand that to be so?

Mr. MACDONALD: Certainly,

Sir E. CARSON: Then I think it would be far better if the right hon. Gentleman had confined his observations to the Motion on the Paper. It is certainly a wide enough Motion. It raises sufficiently important questions without dragging in these old Irish controversies. He showed in a very few moments that Dominion Home Rule was impossible for Ireland. I rather thought, in one part of his speech, that he was in favour of it, but when he came to consider the somewhat trivial question of finance he found that it would break down entirely and that there was no analogy between Ireland and Australia or any of the other overseas self-governing Colonies. However, I pass from that, for I am not going to be drawn into that controversy at the present moment. But I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for one thing which he said. He said that the Home Rule Act had deprived the citizens of the North of Ireland of a great deal of their birthright as citizens of the United Kingdom. That was always my contention, and that was why I was prepared to fight and would be prepared to fight again. But, if I recollect aright, the right hon. Gentleman voted for that Bill.

Mr. MACDONALD: Yes, but I never denied the fact.

Sir E. CARSON: Then he was prepared to vote for a Bill which he confesses openly in the House of Commons now would deprive us of our rights as citizens of the United Kingdom. And I have no doubt that at the same time he thought that we were wrong in trying to fight for that citizenship which he himself so much prizes. I pass from that and come to the Motion, which is one of the most important Motions which we have had this Session, or, indeed, in any Session. It is the Motion to set up a Committee to frame practically a new Constitution for the United Kingdom—and just look at the House! If anything could demonstrate the condition into which we have come in the present state of affairs, it is the appearance of the House this evening.

Mr. MACDONALD: There are Committees sitting.

Sir E. CARSON: That is the point. I am trying to help the right hon. Gentleman, and he will not let me. We have set up this Session this system of Grand Committees working from morning till night, and I believe that as things are going at present it will ruin this House. I admit that I supported it, but I never for a moment thought that the business we were on would, as I have no doubt it does, require them to sit there so long that the whole of their time would be taken up, and that they would be able to give no attention whatever to this House. I think that that is disastrous. To carry on our great Imperial and great constitutional questions in the absence of a great body of Members of this House, which would be afterwards asked to come down here and pronounce upon the arguments that have been used, is a thing that puts an end to the whole usefulness of this Parliament as a legislative body for the United Kingdom, and also to a certain extent for our Dominions beyond the sea. Therefore, if this was a Motion to inquire as to whether there ought to be a devolution of some of the Business of this House to some other bodies, I would certainly support it. I believe that it will come to that. I believe that we have come to it, and I believe, also, that when we come to investigate how that is to be done, we shall be up against a problem with which we ought not to interfere without the greatest possible amount of information and knowledge, before we act, so that we may be absolutely certain of what we are doing and of its effect upon all the relations of Government—financial, economic, and political.
But I object to this Resolution, in the first place, as would be naturally expected, because I do not understand what is meant by saying, without prejudice to any proposal which the Government may have to make in regard to Ireland. My hon. Friend who proposed the Motion said nothing about that. The right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken did not deal with it either.

Mr. MACDONALD: The Government had expressed its intention of dealing with the Irish question. We did not desire to put an obstacle in the way of the Government's acceptance of our Motion by ignoring proposals it might have to make with regard to Ireland.

Sir E. CARSON: You propose to submit the question of Ireland to the same Com-
mission, so I really do not know what you mean. You really put in that with the view of roping in for this Resolution hon. Members from Ireland. So far as I am concerned, any dealing upon a question of this kind ought to be a dealing with the United Kingdom, and not differently for different parts. While I agree that you must have these local bodies with certain powers conferred upon them by way of devolution, I entirely dissent from the proposition that the unit must be in accordance with nationality. I see no reason for it. I see no reason why England should be only one part. I see great difficulties in having England only one part. I see no reason why Ireland should be only one pare. I see great difficulties in that also. For my own part, while I agree that we ought to have an extension of local government by a process of devolution, I entirely object to its being put on the ground of emphasis of different nationalities of different parts of the United Kingdom. Look at Canada, or look at America, or look at any of those countries where there are subordinate Parliaments. Are they based on questions of nationality? Just imagine for a moment Ontario raising as its watchword "Ontario a nation," or Quebec crying "Quebec a nation"; and the same argument applies to the United States. What you want to see, what you want to ascertain, are the different localities which require different treatment, and you want to devolve upon those different localities, in accordance with the local circumstances, such devolutionary powers as will enable them to meet their needs. It is really a question of extension of local self-government, and not of splitting up the United Kingdom with emphasis into different nationalities.
There is another point which I would like to bring to the attention of the House, and that is that as regards devolution it is entirely a question of degree. The question is, what are you going to devolve? The hon. Gentleman who moved the Resolution at once felt that he was skating over thin ice when he dealt with the question of what these local Parliaments should have powers over. Of course, the first thing you have to do is to see how far you interfere with your Imperial Parliament. That is the most vital thing of all. You must take care that in that Imperial Parliament there is a residuum of power—that is, that the Imperial Parliament guides and governs all the other Parliaments. One of our great objections
to the Home Rule Act was that you put the residuum in the Irish subordinate Parliament, instead of taking it in this Parliament. Then again, as regards the Imperial Parliament, you must set up your principle of taxation for feeding Imperial resources. That must be a system which cannot be interfered with or weakened by any other subordinate Parliament, or you will at once come to grief when you try to carry out your Imperial duties towards the Empire. And as regards all that you must take care that these questions are considered equally and with equal sacrifice in relation to all the various subordinate Parliaments set up. But when you come to deal with the question of devolution it is there I suggest that you really require your Commission, because one of the most difficult things to analyse is where the Imperial begins and ends, where the national begins and ends, what is local and what is national, or what is Imperial. My hon. Friend behind me said he did not know into which category he would put industrial matters.

Major WOOD: I did not say that I did not know where to put them. I said they were debatable.

Sir E. CARSON: That only means there are two opinions, and that is quite sufficient for my argument. Take the question of labour. Are you going; to have different labour laws in your different provincial Parliaments? If you do, you will find great difficulties in carrying on. Are your railways to be an Imperial and national affair or are they to be local? Go and read some of the cases that have occurred on these two subjects between the Dominion Parliament in Canada and the subordinate Parliaments in the different provinces, and you will sec, how full of difficulty the question is. But these are not insurmountable. I am not laying it down as such, but I am putting it forward in order that hon. Members who have not from time to time been brought into close conflict with these questions may see that this is a matter not to be dealt with lightly, but one which goes to the whole root of the proper government of this country. One thing which has been said to-day I agree with entirely, and that is that I do not believe devolution is a step towards separation. Indeed, I am not sure that devolution, if properly carried out, may not lead to closer union, because when all have agreed as to the local contribution to Imperial taxation and to
the maintenance in the Imperial Parliament of certain rights, you will find when you have set them up that you cannot touch any of these Parliaments, no matter what their demands may be, without touching the whole fabric of the Constitution. In that way it becomes one, a great whole which has to be dealt with as a whole. One of my great objections—and a fatal objection—to the Home Rule Act was that you were dealing with one unit of the United Kingdom in a manner in which it would be impossible to deal with the other units, and by making the exceptions you were attempting to create you were simply adding another lever to those who were not prepared to accept union at all with this country, and who would Use that lever for the purpose of greater demands and much greater separation from the United Kingdom. I therefore regret that the Motion has been framed in the way in which it has been framed.
I desire to say only one word more as regards Ireland, and I would not say it but for the observations of the right hon. Gentleman. He says the Irish question cannot remain where it is. That is what we are always saying about the Irish question, but may I point out that while we have always been saying that, does the right hon. Gentleman ever reflect for a moment what a strange thing it is, after the work of thirty years in trying to deal with that question, and the culmination in the Home Rule Act, that not a, single soul in Ireland that I know of desires after five years that the Act should be put into force? There are worse things than leaving the Irish question where it is. Do not meddle with it and make a mess of it, which you are so constantly doing, but as far as possible treat it as you treat England and Scotland, and try to work the United Kingdom as a united whole. You will thus do far better than by trying to make patchwork of one part of a great structure which you cannot touch without in some way or other interfering with the functions of the whole.

Sir HENRY CRAIK: The right hon. Gentleman emphasised a point on which I go much further than he does. We have to look at this matter in the light of common sense, and I think I shall be able to show that, at all events, to some of us, there are practical difficulties in this Motion. I must begin by saying that we all, I certainly for my humble part, fully
appreciate the good intention and aims that lie behind this Motion—aims with which we fully sympathise. I quite agree that if we can give greater aptitude for Imperial affairs to this House, if we can give greater promptitude to our business, if we can give greater responsibility to local action, those would all be objects which we would desire, if possible, to attain. I followed with deep interest the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Ripon, and that of my right hon. Friend opposite. Each of them gave us much argument that was sound. For a moment I would glance first at the speech of the hon. Member for Ripon. He began, not by explaining what it was he wanted, and what he meant to attain, but by first of all telling us that there were evidently differences between different Members of the Government upon this question. That does not carry us much further. He went on to say that this Motion could be advocated from the most diverse points of view. We do not gain strength by that fact.
He told us his chief reason was that the House is receding in popular estimation. That sort of thing has been heard in every generation, and will be heard in every succeeding generation. Another reason he urged for adopting this drastic method was that Members of Parliament were all overworked, and that the subjects to be dealt with were growing so numerous that they could not possibly overtake the work. That may be so, but was there ever a time in the history of this House and Kingdom when the matters to be dealt with by the Grand Inquest of the Nation were not beyond the powers of individual Members? The man who attempted to be an expert in all the subjects that came before the House would soon be fit for Bedlam or would soon get there. There will always be an immense deal of work of the utmost variety for this House, and it will always require more than the wisdom of any individual Member. It must be dealt with by the collective wisdom of the House, which shapes its Members and educates them, and which is far greater than that of any single Member. You could never have any legislative assembly if you expected every member of it to be an expert in every subject which came before it. That is not possible. The hon. Member who moved did not give us any clear idea as to what it was he aimed at, except that he thought that generally this House was
falling in reputation, and that, therefore, it should get rid of a great many of its functions, and, secondly, that its Members could not really overtake all the questions which came before the House. The right hon. Gentleman opposite said that there was great congestion in business. I quite agree, but now the complaint is that legislation is almost too rapid, and that we are likely to have an over quantity of it. The right hon. Gentleman referred to an inquiry held in 1837, and quoted words of Sir Robert Peel during that inquiry, but he did not quote any proposal Sir Robert Peel made. He used an argument which had great force with me, and that is the grave objection to the delegation of the legislature of authority of Parliament to Ministers. I blame both Ministers and Parliament for that. I think it is an evil tendency, and that this House ought to resist that tendency, which, I think, is not merely forced on Ministers by exigencies of time. it tends to establish bureaucratic power which is dangerously increasing in this country at this moment. I do not think the proposal before us would do much to relieve that difficulty. Let us come to what it is those who submit the Resolution want to do. They wish to have a great Imperial Parliament which can deal with great Imperial questions, high diplomatic questions, and questions of defence. Is that going to be an Imperial assembly in which the Dominions are to have a place? Neither the Mover nor the Seconder told us whether they proposed that that great council should be elective or not.

Mr. MACDONALD: That would be entirely beyond the scope of the Motion. The Motion deals with the delegation of certain powers exercised by this Parliament now to certain smaller bodies.

Sir H. CRAIK: The argument advanced was that it was very important that this great Imperial Parliament should be freed from some domestic matters, but is it not best to tell us how that Imperial Parliament is to be constituted. If you elect members to Parliament on the present basis are the Dominions to be represented also by elected members. Is it not most likely that the Dominions will take men of large experience and men who have held high offices and who are well known in administration. If you have elected members for this great super-Parliament how are they to differ from the members of the local Parliaments. Are
you to have one man coming forward to a constituency and saying, "I really cannot give any time to the consideration of these minor local questions. I can only occupy my time with large diplomatic questions and great world-moving propositions, and in a succession of full-dress Debates which will be listened to all the world over. If you want somebody to attend to local affairs you must ask somebody else of a lower grade." Are you to have others who will come forward and say, "I do not aspire to the great Imperial Parliament.'' Do you think you are likely to get the very best men for both Assemblies, or is the suggestion made here some time ago to be adopted, namely, that as a sort of consolation prize, those who are second and third on the poll are to be members of the local Parliaments. These arc matters of practical importance, as to which I think we should be told before we deal in this scheme. I turn to the question of how this proposal will affect particular parts of the country. The right hon. Gentleman opposite referred to Ireland, and I want to know how it will affect my own country. I would ask English Members' not to listen while I give certain confidential advice to my fellow-Members for Scotland. I would ask those fellow-Members, Do you think that we are so very badly off in the present arrangement of the Constitution that it would be well to cut the painter and set up for ourselves a separate Assembly, and do you think under those circumstances we would have half of the Cabinet and of the important positions in England assigned to us? Is it suggested that higher intellects who aspire to take part in the affairs of the nation are to be cut off from local affairs, and will Scotland be any better off if she is to have a sort of second-best Members to deal with local affairs?
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We should pause long before we engage upon a dangerous project of this sort, because it is all very well to say there is no harm in an inquiry. We know very well that if a great Parliamentary inquiry is held it will be immediately asked why are you doing nothing, and why are you not taking decisive steps to carry out the report of that inquiry. You appoint a great inquiry as to how devolution is to take place, and are you going to let that yield nothing at all? Do you think it will not give rise to various schemes, schemes
that will be disturbing and unsettling to the whole working of the British constitution? Surely in the first place, before we introduce this disturbing element, before we try to reconstitute our Constitution, we ought to have some clearer idea where we are. For the first time we are asked to divide legislative functions in this country. Extend local administration as far as you like—we have done that largely in the recent past", and I hope we shall do so more in the future—strengthen your local administrative bodies as much as you like, put upon them what duties you can, but beware before you introduce a competing legislative authority, which cannot grow into any importance without stripping away some of the importance of this central authority. The Mover and Seconder of the Resolution admitted that there was an enormous difficulty in saying what were local and what were Imperial questions, but who is to decide them? Is it not positively certain that between his Imperial Parliament and the local bodies there will be an immediate difference of opinion as to what are the functions belonging to each, and who is to settle those? Are we to have that new piece of machinery in out Constitution which has been found necessary in the United States, but which I contend is absolutely alien to the whole spirit of our Constitution, namely, that differences between different legislative bodies should be decided by the Supreme Court? Do we want the Law Courts to decide between us and these devolutionary bodies? That would be perfectly new to us. I believe myself that, desirable as all this raising of this Imperial idea of this House may be, anxious as we all are to quicken our procedure—and we have shown it by recent measures which we have adopted—ready, as we are, to foster activity and public spirit by independent action on the part of the various localities of this country, yet I think the first and the most important thing we have to do is to say, "What is to be the form of our great Imperial Parliament that is to bring the whole of the Empire together?" My right hon. Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Long) in another place told us he found in his experience as Colonial Minister that the various Colonial people he met found fault with this House because it was so much occupied with small and petty affairs.

The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. Long): I did not say small and petty. The language used was that they found us engaged upon domestic rather than Imperial affairs.

Sir H. CRAIK: But surely the thing that has been most distinctive of this House all through its history, the thing that has brought it most close to the hearts of the people, the thing that has made it what it is, a great power in the nation, is that it combines care for domestic politics with a spirit for great Imperial politics. Surely my right hon. Friend will agree that the comparative interest in Imperial and domestic politics varies from time to time. There are whole Sessions of Parliament when the whole central interest of the House rests upon some domestic question of great importance. Surely he will remember in the Session of 1906 that the whole interest was occupied with the Education Bill. At another time the interest shifts, and Parliament occupies itself in some great foreign question. That is what enables our House to suit itself to the various interests and experiences, and to get hold of the hearts of the people it represents. Do not let us fancy that we will make ourselves a greater body if we try to wash our hands of what we call domestic questions, and if we say to our constituents, "You must not trouble us with these local matters of yours, we leave them to others; we can only meet as a great Imperial concern; we can only have full dress Debates which all the world will listen to." That is not what the Parliament of this country has been. Let us do what we can to expedite our measures, let us do what we can to entrust a very wide share of administration to local authorities, but let us pause before we strip this House of a great part of the functions that have made it great in the past, and let us pause before we divide the unity of legislative authority and make two competing legislative authorities in the Kingdom.

Mr. LONG: Before I say a very few words about the Resolution which is before the House, it is my duty to tell the House what is the view which His Majesty's Government take of the attitude that they should assume on this occasion, and they have decided that the proper course is to leave this Debate freely and absolutely to the House of Commons, with freedom both for Members of the
Government and, of course, for other Members of the House to take such part in it, either by speech or by vote, as they may see fit. So far as the Government are concerned, they do not propose as a Government either to try to affect the vote of, or to offer advice to, the House of Commons. But individually we shall, of course, express our views, whether we are for or against the subject of the Resolution. As a supporter of the Federal system, I confess that the precise wording of this Motion places me in somewhat the. same difficulty in which my right hon. and learned Friend the leader of the Irish Unionist party, who spoke a few moments ago, found himself. There is language in it which I think is misleading, and the phrase to which my right hon. and learned Friend referred is, I think, very puzzling. I have no responsibility for the Motion and I am not going to criticise those particular words from the point of view adopted by my right hon. and learned Friend, who put the case for himself and for those for whom he speaks, but it seems to me that the introduction of those words is destructive of the Motion itself. The Motion, as I understand it, the Motion that I am anxious to support, is a Motion advising that there shall be a Parliamentary body set up to inquire into and make recommendations upon a system of subordinate Parliaments for the United Kingdom. It seems to me, if that be the decision of the House of Commons, as I hope it may be, to be a contradiction of terms to say that that action is not to prejudice in any way action regarding Ireland. One of the reasons why I am a strong Federalist is because I have always maintained that if you find it necessary to alter your Parliamentary system by some devolution of business, whatever may be your governing reasons, you should treat the United Kingdom as a whole, on the same terms and in the same way and that you should give to all members of the United Kingdom the same privileges and the same Parliamentary rights and the same Parliamentary powers, and if it is suggested that in setting up a Federal system there is to be, because there is an Irish Act on the Statute Book, some separate treatment for Ireland, I could not vote for the Resolution.

Mr. MACDONALD: Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me to try and explain? The phrase is. "without prejudice to any proposals it (the Government) may have to make with regard to Ireland."
Will he consider our position? We were asking the Government to appoint a body to report upon a matter to apply to the three countries. We had been told—I do not say with authority—that they were considering some proposals for dealing with the Irish question, and we wanted to make it clear to them that we were not going to prejudice their proposals and that they would still be at perfect freedom to follow out their own ideas with regard to Ireland without being pledged to any proposals which we might make.

Mr. LONG: I understand the intentions of the right hon. Gentleman, but his explanation does not in the smallest degree lessen my criticism of those words or remove my objection to them. I will not bore the House by repeating what I have already said, but I will add this, that I am here to support a Federal—system that is to say, a system under which you will give to subordinate Parliaments some of the duties which are now performed by the central Parliament alone; and that principle seems to me to be somewhat impinged upon by the insertion of those words, and I should like this Motion better if those words were removed. But if there be a Division on this question I shall vote, as I have often had to do before in the House of Commons, for a Resolution which docs not precisely express my views, but which contains the principle to which I desire to give my support, and which I desire to see given effect to by subsequent Parliamentary action. With the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the Duncairn Division (Sir E. Carson) in the main I agree, and I did not observe that his objections were to the principle of devolution or to the proposals in the Resolution. They were rather well timed advice as to the difficulties, criticisms as to some possible suggestions, and indications of dangers which undoubtedly lie ahead in the adoption of any proposal of this kind, and all that ho said, as he told us himself, indicated that those are difficulties which are not insuperable.
My right hon. Friend who has just addressed us has spoken in language of caution to the House of Commons. He has begged us not to be precipitate, or to act without careful consideration, but that is a very strong argument in support of the Resolution, because the advice which the Mover and Seconder of this Resolution give to the House of Commons —advice which I am here to support to the best of my poor ability—is, not that you
are to adopt here and now a cast iron plan which they have thrown down before you, but that you are to appoint a Parliamentary body, and upon that body is to be devolved the task—difficult, no doubt, but by no means insuperable—of devising a scheme which will give effect to the general principles expressed in this Resolution. That is obviously ft policy of caution and of prudence. Lot mo remind my right hon. Friend—though I am afraid he will not regard it as an inducement to alter his views on this occasion—of the action which Parliament took when they appointed the Conference over v. which Mr. Speaker presided with such enormous advantage to Parliament and the country, when they discussed in that Conference a question, probably as difficult and as thorny as any you could put before a conference, namely, the alterations that were to be made in the Parliamentary franchise. There were strict divisions of opinion about it in this House and out-side. There were some branches of the question which were regarded with the greatest possible affection by different parties and different groups of parties, and yet once that Conference met—a Parliamentary conference such as this, representative of the various Parliamentary parties, and presided over by a great chairman—those difficulties gradually disappeared, and to-day we owe it to that Conference that we have got a reform of our franchise carried peacefully, quietly, and with general consent, which, I believe, we should otherwise never have got without the bitterest and most prolonged Parliamentary conflict, fights outside, and probably to-day we should be trying to deal with these great after-war questions, and solve these great peace problems in a Parliament with whoso, constitution the great majority of electors would be wholly dissatisfied. That, surely, is an argument in favour of a course recommended by the Mover and Seconder of this Resolution.
My right hon. Friend adopted what I have always heard described as the feminine argument He found it was easier to ask the other person a question than to produce precise arguments of his own. Surely my right hon. Friend disregarded his own advice. He urged us to be cautious, prudent, and to step warily, and yet he asked us here to produce a plan for an Imperial Parliament before we have dealt with our local and domestic
difficulties. Surely that is putting the cart before the horse. Surely it is our business to see whether we have difficulties of our own; whether, if we admit that the existing system does not promise the success that is desired, we are able to find something better; or whether we are forced to the conclusion that statesmanship is bankrupt and that we have to admit failure and cannot produce a remedy? Surely that it what we have got to do? In the Debate we have had, so far, and in previous Debates on this subject in and out of the House of Commons, has there been found anybody to deny that our system to-day is not sufficient for our purpose and that our machine no longer can turn out the articles that the United Kingdom requires? Reference has been made to the changes under which legislation has gone upstairs. My right hon. Friend, in his speech, referred to one of the new practices under which Bill after Bill is cot through this House and placed on the Statute Book. How? By taking power, when you come to the most difficult and complicated questions, to deal with them by Order in Council, or, worse still, by Regulations drawn up by a Department, the result being that half your law is to be found, not in your Statute Book, but you have got to go to Schedules, to Orders in Council, or to Regulations counted by hundreds and thousands before you know what is the law and how it ought to be administered. That is one of the difficulties which we arc compelled to face. Is that denied by anybody? I do not think anybody has ever attempted to deny the existence of that evil and the reality of it.
But there are other evils. Does anybody deny that the demands upon this House for legislation have grown enormously in the last twenty or thirty years, and that, situated as we are now, with our present powers, we cannot hope to give reasonable effect to all these suggestions? Will anybody dispute that if he looks through the Order Paper, takes the number of Bills that are suggested here for our consideration, and further asks himself, What are the things we want done, and what prospect is there of getting them done? I am not quite, sure, but I think I am one of the oldest Members of this House. I am sure there is nobody in the House, except my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who has sat in it longer than I have, and there are very few who have sat here as long. I have spent
nearly forty years here, and this House holds, not only my admiration and my gratitude for all the favours it has showered upon me, but my undying and unfailing admiration, and I would, if I could honestly do so, vote preferably to leave things as they are. It is not the House that has failed. I do not think it is Ministers or Members who have failed. I will not say anything about Ministers, because I happen to be one myself, and, judging from the newspapers, some of us are guilty of almost all the crimes of which human beings can be capable. I do not honestly believe myself it is in any degree the fault of Members of Parliament. Members of Parliament have changed, of course—changed immensely since the day when I first entered Parliament—but he would be a very unjust man to the House of Commons who contended that they had changed for the worse. Parliament to-day is as capable, as honest, as high-minded, and as devoted to work as ever was the Parliament of this country in all its great and glorious history.
It is not Governments; it is not Members of Parliament. No, it is that times have changed, and we have got to change with them. The need for legislation is greater. The power of our people to appreciate their deficiencies and their wants, and to suggest remedies for them, has immensely increased. The power to express their need in powerful language which reaches us here is far more widespread than it was in those earlier days. Parliament must realise it has a different task to accomplish to-day from that which it had ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago, that it has to bear a heavier burden, that it has to realise it has to meet much greater and more widespread demands. It cannot do that itself, and it must ask for some other means by which this burden can be borne, because borne I believe it must be, or you will have discontent and dissatisfaction among our people, and not only will you discredit Parliamentary institutions, but you will do worse than that—you will endanger the very fabric upon which the United Kingdom, and, therefore, the Empire, rests. You must give the people the feeling of confidence that when they came here their just and legitimate demands can be met without undue delay, or you will have them say, as they are beginning to say now, that Parliament is of no use and they have lost their respect for it. Can you do this unless you are prepared to set up subordinate Par-
liaments, and to devolve some part of your work upon them? I support this general principle, because I believe that the answer to that question must be in the negative. I believe you cannot accomplish this great task unless you are prepared to look facts in the face, and adopt the new plan which is suggested in this Resolution. I agree with my right hon. Friend (Sir E. Carson) in one of his criticisms. I refuse to approach this question as one of different nations. I have always held that different parts of the United Kingdom have different requirements, that they look at their needs through different coloured classes, and we know it here. Let me give two illustrations, one in regard to legislation. My right hon. Friend said perfectly truly that this House owes much of its glory and its greatness to the fact that it has always been identified with the lives of the people. I do not want to see that great part of our work destroyed, but I want to see it altered in degree. In many parts of the country you have different conditions which demand different treatment. What do you do now? Is the Parliament of to-day acting in true accord with the lines laid down by my right hon. Friend? The answer made by anybody who is conversant with our history and practice must be that it is not.

Sir H. CRAIK: Why?

Mr. LONG: I will tell my right hon. Friend why. My right hon. Friend referred to the question of education. What is the history of education legislation in this House? A Bill for England, a Bill for Ireland, a Bill for Scotland yes, and a Bill for Wales—four distinct Bills dealing with the same subject. Is not that turning this House into a separate legislative body? It is quite true, you will tell me, there is in this House ultimate control and supreme authority. But what actually happens? it is no use talking in this practical age of what we can do or might do. What I am trying to get the House to realise is what we do actually in practice. A Scottish Bill or an English Bill comes up. Other Members go away, and very often do not come in to vote when Divisions are taken, but when they do it has been urged more than once with great force that they come in to upset conclusons arrived at by those who represent the interests concerned. No, Sir; this is not so great a change in reality as it would seem. Look at the financial side of the question. I am not
an authority on finance, and it has generally been my duty in my political life to be getting money out of the Treasury and not to be conserving the national finances. But let the House realise what happens in this matter of finance. An Education Bill is passed for England. Some critics of our Parliamentary institution have said unkindly that it is desirable to gild your pill. I do not put it in that way, but it is necessary very often to find financial assistance in order to enable a particular measure at the moment to be carried out. The Bill applies to one part of the United Kingdom alone, and, for its smoother working financial Grants are made. Ever since 1888, when this plan began, what has happened? In 1888 you passed the Local Government Act, which is practically for England and Wales. Why only those two countries? Why did the Education Act only affect England and Wales? Because your systems are totally different. You could not—the Parliamentary draftsman or the most brilliant man in the world could not—put together or draft a Bill which would have applied equally to the two countries. Therefore you had to deal with them in separate Bills.
How about finance? In order to make the English Local Government Act or the Education Act work smoothly and effectively, you had to make grants of money. You could not deal with them at the same time in these other countries to the rest of the United Kingdom. Scotland says, in a case of the kind, "You arc giving a Grant to England; we shall have to have one as well; it is quite true we have nothing particular to spend it on at present, but you must give us an equivalent Grant." I forget the exact formula, but there is a formula, and on that basis, even though there is no necessity for the money, it has been given. My right hon. Friend behind me (Sir H. Craik) challenged me. I challenge him in return. He will remember that on more than one occasion when the equivalent Grant was given we have had Debates here as to how the money was to be applied so that we might make some provision for it. I can remind him of Debates which for the moment he may have forgotten, when the way in which the money was ultimately spent was the result of a game of battledore and shuttlecock. The Session was drawing to an end. Everyone's patience was coming to an end, too. Some way was
arranged for applying the money until some better use could be found for it. That, I say, is a waste of public money. In dealing only with one part of the country you have to deal with it not only as a Legislative Council, but also from the point of view of finance, and in order to satisfy the people you actually have to make financial Grants which for the moment are not required and ought not to be made. That is the way the thing is working out now. What I am saying is not an invention of my brain nor am I telling a silly story which does not represent the facts. It is a real and very simple account of what actually takes place. Then my right hon. Friend says: "How are you going to draw the distinction between the Imperial and the subordinate Parliaments. What control are you going to have?" So far as I am concerned I have had the experience of helping to draft a good many Acts of Parliament and I am prepared to give ray assistance towards drafting a federal plan. I have in my dispatch box a scheme which, as I think, would work extremely well. But the time for that is not yet.
If this Resolution in the main is adopted there follows the task of deciding these difficult questions—and I agree they are difficult in this question of devolution—as to whether you are going to adopt the American procedure and introduce a Supreme Court to decide questions where there is a difference of opinion between the central and subordinate Parliaments. I agree it would be a tremendous change in our old British constitution. I do not, however, think it is necessary or inevitable that this should be so, but that is exactly one of the questions which the body suggested in this Resolution would have to consider—consider what would be the form the devolution proposals should take. In his speech my right hon. Friend, I think, misunderstood what I said in speaking in the Committee Room. I also think he misunderstood what has been said here. I want to correct any false impression that may have been given. When I referred to my experiences at the Colonial Office and spoke of the conversations I had had with distinguished representatives of our various Dominions Overseas, there was no intention of suggesting that the Imperial Parliament would be unwilling to deal with these questions because they were not worthy of it. What animated these gentlemen who spoke to me, and what is my own conviction, is
this—let the right hon. Gentleman carry his mind back over the years he has sat in this House. This War, from which we have just emerged, thank God, triumphantly, has shown us many things and taught us many lessons.
Amongst them is one that we in this House, responsible for the government of this country, have never given sufficient time to the consideration of those great problems the solution of which often affect, if they do not make, the whole difference between peace and war. We know now that there is much we might well have discussed in days gone by thin we left untouched. How often on the floor of this House has my right hon. Friend heard Debates as to our relations with other countries, as to the steps we were taking, the policy we were pursuing? As regards our great Dominions, it is obviously unnecessary to have Debates, because they manage their own affairs. But think of our great Colonial Possessions, our Crown and Colonial Governments and Protectorates. Questions concerning their government, of vital interest, as not only affecting the credit and reputation of the country, but the welfare of posterity and the greatness of the Empire, how often are they discussed? A few hours on the Colonial Vote occasionally! A few hours on Foreign Office questions! A few hours thrown to India! What is the rest of our time taken up with? Is it not entirely taken up with legislation affecting domestic concerns? My right hon. Friend said that in the eighteenth century this Parliament was more concerned with legislation than with administration. It was so concerned with legislation because it had more time. It is not that Parliament itself has altered. It is that Parliament has to do work to-day that the Parliament of that time did not do. One cannot be blind to the altered conditions, which ask for and demand altered service on our part.
Greater burdens were thrown upon individuals than they could well bear, said my right hon. Friend, and my right hon. Friend answered that by saying that men could not be expected to grasp and understand all these questions. Look for a moment at the way in which our business is done. We sit throughout the greater part of the year. Autumn Sessions and winter Sessions now come regularly. We sit all through the spring and the summer.
We have an immense amount of business to deal with, and very often it has to be hurriedly concluded when the end does come. Is it possible that work done in that way is likely to be as efficient as we would wish it to be? Are we not really as individual Members bearing rather heavier burdens than we can bear? Is there any other remedy? I would ask those who object to the principle of this Resolution, I would ask those who object to the Federal plan, is there any other remedy that you can suggest which will deal with what is an undoubted and generally admitted evil? I, at all events, know of no other. I was in this House before we had any closure. I have never liked it. It is hostile to my own personal views about the conduct of Debate and the discharge of public business. But does anybody suggest to-day that the closure should be abandoned?
How much business would you in an ordinary way do, or when party warfare waxed strong and feeling ran high, without some form of closure? Again, take the form of closure which deals with great masses of Amendments, and even allows parts of Clauses to go through without being properly debated, all this machinery is necessary if you are to get through the vast amount of business that the House is now asked to perform. When I first entered the House one of the most interesting and valuable parts of our work was to be found in the amount of time given to private Members. Most valuable Bills were sometimes brought in by private Members, affecting the welfare of the State. Some of their Resolutions led to immensely important reforms. If Parliament is to do the work that Governments are called upon to perform to-day, the time for private Members has to be limited, and, as all know, it has now come to this point, that private Members' opportunities are so few that they are really hardly worth having? Is there any other plan? The Imperial Parliament is overburdened. In the forty years I have served here every kind of remedy has been mentioned. We began with the closure. You have gone on from the closure ordinary to the closure in its more complicated form. There has been set up what we call Grand Committees—and we have now improved upon that. You have done all you could to get through the work. Has it been successful? Do you believe that by simply transferring work from the House to Committees that you are going really to solve the problem?
There is one other aspect of the case I should like a word or two about. It is not, I think, wrong to suggest that some of these domestic questions with which we deal would be better settled in the locality, because we find in some of them a very great conflict of opinion between the North and South, between different parts of the United Kingdom—not necessarily in different parts. I do not mean as between England and Scotland and Ireland, but between different parts of the country. I never have pretended that if you have Devolution you may not have to consider more than one Parliament in each country. That is one of the inevitable, consequences of a difference among our people. But at all events you will give more time in this House to discuss those greater questions of Imperial concern, whether foreign or of our own Dominions and Colonies; you will give greater opportunity for discussing the great questions of Imperial Defence which must be common to the whole Empire after the War, and I believe you will have greater opportunities of carrying the minor domestic legislation which is demanded and required, and which I do not think this House can hope to pass if we are to deal with these greater questions.
My right hon. Friend says, "Does this mean that you will have an Imperial Parliament in which the Empire will be represented?" I never concealed my own views or hopes—whether I shall live to see it or not I do not know—but I always hoped, and hope now, that it will come, and that in this great Assembly there will be men entitled to speak for all parts of the Empire on the great Imperial questions. Whether we shall ever get it I do not know. The question is a very difficult and definite one. It involves the representation of the different parts of the Empire. You certainly never will bring about a reform of the kind if it involves any lessening of the absolute rights and powers of the Dominion Parliaments. That is what I have hoped for. But this Resolution has nothing to do with any question of that kind. It is a purely domestic affair. It suggests to us that we have great and difficult Parliamentary problems that we ought to solve, that our own House is capable of being improved, and that we should set our own house in order before we think about greater things. It is not so imperious as any of the suggestions made by my right hon.
Friend, but, although I do not quite agree with the wording of this Resolution, I believe that in it is to be found a principle which this House will be compelled sooner or later to accept, and which I hops it will accept now while there is time to deal without haste with this tremendous question. I believe that this Resolution affords us an opportunity to express our opinion, and I for one shall not hesitate, if I have the opportunity, to give my vote for it. I read it as indicating that the time has come when it is necessary in the interests of the United Kingdom and of the Empire to set up Federal Parliaments, and to leave this great Parliament here to deal with those wider questions which I believe in the immediate future it must consider, and the solution of which I believe is bound up not only with our own prosperity here, but with the very existence of our Empire.

Major MACKENZIE WOOD: I have listened with great interest to all the speeches which have been delivered this afternoon, and I wish to offer a few observations, not so much on the general problem as on the especial point of view of Scotland. For many years Home Rule for Scotland has been one of the stock planks of Parliamentary candidates in Scotland. It must be confessed, however, that Home Rule in Scotland has been largely an academic question. But in the last year or two a change has taken place, and I do not think it is too much to say that at the present time it may be taken to be a question of immediate practical importance. Circumstances have forced it to the front. Probably the constitutional changes which have been suggested in the way of associating the Dominions more with Imperial affairs have suggested it, but there is no doubt that feeling in Scotland on this question has hardened, and that Home Rule there to-day is a much more living thing than ever it was before. But apart from any question of a federal solution for the difficulties of government in this country, I think there is no doubt that public opinion in Scotland would have compelled Parliament to take up this question as affording some means of getting over the neglect of Scottish affairs which has gone on for so many years. Older Members may be a little reconciled to the amazing congestion in the House of Commons, but to a new Member the position is simply appalling. I find this afternoon
that I ought to have been in three places at the same time, and I am certain that most of the few Scotsmen who are against Home Rule, if they had a week in the House of Commons would very soon alter their minds, and would at once admit that something must be done to give Scotland her proper place, to find some means by which Scottish affairs should be dealt with in the way in which they ought to be dealt with, and to find some means and some system whereby exclusively Scottish affairs would be dealt with exclusively by Scotsmen in Scotland. For my part I attach a great deal of importance to having the Government in Scotland. Not only would this save a great deal of time and money in running backwards and forwards from Scotland to England, but it would enable us to enlist in Parliament a type of man whom we are unable to get at the present time. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir H. Craik) told us that if we had a local legislature in Scotland it would be something in the nature of a second prize to membership of this House. In my view, if we had a local legislature in Scotland, we would be able to rope into Parliamentary affairs men of the largest experience, who would gladly come to this House if it were not that it was so far a way. Although they cannot come to this House they would be delighted to go to Edinburgh, because then they would be able to look after other affairs in a way that they could not do if the Parliament were in London. In the same way constituencies in the North of Scotland are greatly handicapped by the fact that they are so far from the seat of Government. They cannot approach their Members, they cannot approach Government Departments in the same way as they would otherwise do. A local legislature in Scotland would therefore enlarge the circle from which Members of Parliament could be drawn. An absentee Member of Parliament is open to the same objection as an absentee landlord, and the sooner absenteeism is put an end to the better. It seems to me that one of the great disadvantages of the present system is that all the diverse interests of Scottish Government are at the present time fixed in the Secretary for Scotland. The Secretary for Scotland cannot possibly be an expert on all the many question for which ho is responsible in Parliament. Scotland would like separate Ministers for Agriculture, for
Health, for Fisheries and probably for other things, but at the present time it is impossible to get that, because of the number of Ministers we have in this House already, and also, and mainly, perhaps, because anything in the nature of appointing other Ministers for these special duties would take away the prestige of the Secretary for Scotland and deprive Scot land of the influence in the Cabinet which she ought to have. There is another point of view from which Scotland and, I imagine, other parts of the United Kingdom also, would look at this question. The spirit of nationalism has been awakened all over the world by the War. It was never probably more in evidence than it is at the present day, and as far as Scotland is concerned I think it is not too much to say that the achievements of Scottish soldiers have gone a long way in doing this for her. Scotsmen realise that they have a special point of view, and they desire to develop along their own peculiar national lines. Scotland is much more democratic than England. She is more advanced in her ideas with regard to education, with regard to land reform, and with regard to temperance, and she desires to be mistress of her own fate on these matters and others like them. She desires to be able to settle questions relating to these subjects without the interference of other parts of the United Kingdom. I believe that a subordinate legislature, such as is suggested by this Resolution, would meet the aspirations of Scotland on this point. it would secure for her all that she desires without doing anything to undermine the authority or supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. For that reason I welcome the Resolution, and I hope it will be passed. But I welcome it even more, because I think there may be some possibility of getting out of the terrible Irish deadlock from which we are suffering at the present time. To-day's discussion suggests that a much nearer approximation to unanimity could be obtained if we set ourselves to consider this question, and if all parties tried honestly to find a way out. The First Lord of the Admiralty has already referred to the good results which arose out of the Speaker's Conference, leading to the Reform Bill of the last Parliament. That is surely an absolute analogy, and is the very best promise that one could have in entering upon such an inquiry as is suggested by the Resolution to-day. I hope, therefore, that the House
will adopt this Resolution, and that the inquiry will be set on foot at the earliest possible moment. I believe that if this problem is grappled with in the way in which we have reason, from the speeches which have been delivered to-day, to hope it may be, we shall be able to achieve solid advantages from the course which has been suggested by the Resolution.

7.0 P.M.

Mr. MACKINDER: I desire to congratulate the hon. and gallant Member who has just spoken upon his first speech in this House. It is a pleasant duty which has fallen upon me as a fellow Scottish representative, and I am sure it is the general feeling of the House. I agree very heartily in one point which he made. He referred to the difficulty of manning this Parliament under present conditions. In distant parts of the country men must become more and more professional politicians if they are to be present here in Westminster under the conditions of to-day, and I believe that if legislation affecting distant portions of the country, and affecting the social life of those portions of the country, were settled within those regions, a better type of man would be obtained, in the sense that he would be a man still in business, still engaged actively in the affairs of the region, and therefore he would speak with a more vivid knowledge. I believe we have to face this increasing difficulty in this House, that, at any rate as regards those portions of the country not in London or near it. a very great deal of social legislation will have to be carried on by professional politicians.
May I say that it is not my intention to move the Amendment which stands in my name, and that of two other hon. Members. Our object in setting down that Amendment was to call attention to a certain characteristic of this Motion. The right hon. Gentleman who spoke from the Front Bench expressed himself dissatisfied with the precise wording, and he said that it narrowed the issue, and that what he was going to vote for was not for the words of this Resolution, but for the broad principle which it contained. He said that he intended to vote for the setting up of a Parliamentary body to consider the creation of subordinate Legislatures within the United Kingdom. I should never have set down my Amendment if that had been the statement made by this Resolution. This
proposal narrows the issue by adopting a national basis for the system of devolution. Under the headings 1 and 2 quite clearly it makes nationality the criterion of the amount of devolution and not efficiency in government. I am amply satisfied with the success of the Amendment in drawing attention to this defect. Almost every hon. Member who has spoken has referred to this Amendment, and the right hon. Gentleman on the Front Bench (Mr. Long) and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Duncairn (Sir E. Carson) emphatically endorsed the point of view I wish to urge. They both urged in connection with the subordinate Legislatures which are proposed to be sot up that they should not be set up in respect of nationalities, which they regard as a retrogressive measure, but they should be in regard to regions which have today-common interests which may be rational but arc not necessarily so.
I am not going to refer to two great questions which have already been discussed. On the one hand there is the failure of our present system. That has been discussed, and I agree with what hon. Members have said. On the other hand, as regards the necessity for setting up some great organ of Government in this Empire, whether that organ is to be Parliamentary in its nature is not yet settled. As the late Secretary for the Colonies said that is a difficult and delicate question, but surely the first thing we have to do if we are to be capable of playing our part alongside the Dominion Parliament of Canada and the Commonwealth Parliament of Australia, is to eliminate from our duties those details which are eliminated from the duties of the Commonwealth Parliament and the Dominion Parliament. Then we shall have a system which will permit of correlation.
I put those two great questions on one side, because I want to deal with what has been spoken of as the Heptarchy. The very nature of federation seems to make that an urgent question. One hon. Member told me that if I felt the inconvenience that might ensue upon having a predominant partner in this country, then I must also consider the inconvenience of breaking up England. The hon. Member exactly expressed the difficulty that I feel, which is that it is going to be difficult to break up England on the one hand, and, on the other hand, it is also going to be difficult to work a federation in which England remains not broken up. That is the essen-
tially practical difficulty which our Parliamentary Body will have to face, and it seems to me absolutely essential that that difficulty should be faced in this Debate. Whatever the terms of reference to the Parliamentary Body may be, they will be settled by the Government and submitted to Parliament, and I gather from what the right hon. Gentleman said just now, that they will be general terms, and will not exclude the difficulty to which I am drawing attention. Why do I say that this is the crux of the whole matter? There is the inconvenience of dividing England and the inconvenience of having an undivided England. I say that for this reason. You may tell me that, of course, there will be an Act of Parliament which will define the provinces of the supreme and of the subordinate Parliaments. There will be a Constitution, but it will be a paper Constitution unless it corresponds to realities. Where is the Act of Union at this moment? With one single exception, where are the hon. Gentlemen who represent Ireland? So far as this House is concerned, the Act of Union is not in existence at this moment. That is a case of a paper Constitution and absent realities.
Take the complementary case. England has been worked for centuries without a written Constitution. It has developed a, Constitution which has been the admiration of the world because it consisted of living realities and the habits of the people. Whatever your written Constitution defining the relations of the superior and subordinate Parliaments may do, unless it has reference to the realities of human nature acting in great assemblies, that Constitution will become void and useless. Let us imagine for a moment the condition of things if you had the three or four legislatures contemplated by the un-amended Motion. Hon. Gentlemen tell me England is already predominant and will be predominant and that there will be no change in this respect. But there will be this vast change: England to-day as a nationality is, unorganised; then England will be organised, which is a vast difference. The effect of it will not only be in this England, but it will be in. the smaller portions of the United Kingdom. If you ask me why, traditionally, Scotland has been Liberal, I should have to say two things. In the first place, Liberal is a Scottish word for Conservative; and if you go on my second point—why Scotland was not content to call Con-
servatism Conservatism—I should tell you because England did so, and Scotland must assert her nationality by trying to be different in all things.
If that is the case when England is unorganised, how much more will it be the case when England becomes organised? In the presence of that great power within this United Kingdom, the nationality, the separateness of action of Scotland and of the two parts of Ireland, or at any rate of one of the two parts of Ireland, and of Wales, will be emphasised ten times over. The other portions of the country will be incited to assert themselves against predominant England. Think of what that England will be, and think of the English Parliament. The Parliament which would be set up under this Motion would be one representing 36,000,000 people, and your Imperial Parliament would represent 45,000,000 people. The Premier for England will be a very big man alongside the Premier for the United Kingdom. Supposing there was a difference of opinion as to the delimitation of powers between the superior and the subordinate Parliaments, is it going to be an easy thing to keep in order that great giant in the Federal system?
Let me assume that it is an acute difference rousing passion. Your scrap of paper will be in very great danger of being torn up, human beings being human beings. Even if we put ourselves as a nation into the strait-waistcoat of a supreme court of judicature for the purpose of interpreting the Constitution and supreme Act of Parliament, I venture to say that the Court itself will find the need of all the support it can get if one of the suitors before it is this suitor representing the 36,000,000 out of 45,000,000 people in this country. How in practice do you keep the Parliaments which are nominally subordinate in a truly subordinate position? Simply by letting no one be predominant, so that the supreme Parliament may always be sure that if there is a difference between it and one of those other Parliaments it will at once have the assistance of the remaining subordinate Parliaments who become jealous of the ambition of that one Parliament. Those are realities which we commonly practise in our life. They are the very simple essence of our conduct in public meetings. I remember once hearing a sermon at Oxford by Bishop Creighton; he was
trying to define the essence of an Englishman, and he said it was contained in that famous old idea that if three Englishmen were thrown up from a shipwreck on an island the first would propose, and the second would second, that the third do take the chair. The chairman in our assembly, if he is faced by some minority who challenge his authority, appeals to the whole body to support the Chair, and he gets support from the great majority, and he is thus able by our common constitutional methods to rule the minority.
That is entirely based on the fact that he is dealing with a small element in his audience, but if that audience is equally divided, then the balance is destroyed and the authority of the chair is lost. If you go from that simple method, which is the very root of our liberties and customs and ways as a nation, right away up to the organised system which we are contemplating, the same essential facts of human nature hold, and if you attempt to create fictions which are alien to those facts, so much the worse for your fictions. Imagine a great crisis; such a crisis as the opening of our War, in 1914. Imagine that the passions of men are deeply stirred, and stirred all the more deeply because of the restraint which is put upon them, Remember, those of us who were here at that time, that strained hour when Lord Grey—Sir Edward Grey as he then was—spoke to us, and when this House declared war; for it was this House which declared war, not by vote, but by accepting the word spoken by its representative, the Foreign Secretary. Assume that at that time you had had in existence a great English Parliament and these other Parliaments, and assume that one of these other Parliaments had differed. At that moment we were more united in the declaration of war than at the declaration of most wars, and practically of all wars, in our history. If you had had an organisation at hand in one of these subordinate legislatures, you would have had machinery ready to declare a lack of unanimity on the part of this nation.
It is essential, then, that your Parliaments should not, if they are subordinate, be such as in any way to challenge the supremacy of the great Parliament. If your English Parliament, elected by 36,000,000 people sat in London across the river, in that great palace which is now going up and which might be usurped; if you had that Parliament, then
we should come to have in this country what is commonly called, at this moment, a dyarchy. For it would be impossible, practically, to prevent an English opinion from being crystallised there, and although it might not express itself there, excepting in times of great tension, it would find its expression here, although that expression was, in fact, crystallised to a large extent across the water. On that point, I would only just remind hon. Members that even the London County Council, in 1906, went some little way for a time towards wagging this Parliament. On that county council, before 1906, there was a very active group of young men. Some of them came into this House in 1906, and it was notorious that for two or three years opinions formed and crystallised outside were interpreted here by that group of men. At this moment there are bodies of men, not only in this country but in other countries, who are anxious to displace Parliamentary accepted institutions. They wish to set up some new Assembly, based on Soviets, some new federation of communism. May I remind hon. Members of what the Prime Minister said in a speech, when people came to him in this country and wanted to legislate in industrial matters practically outside the House by setting up a Soviet system here. He said, "You have your Soviet, the national Soviet, in the House of Commons."
There is a very great danger if you set up two Parliaments, based probably on two franchises, almost certainly on different electoral areas, that one of those Parliaments will be got possession of by one party in the State, and the other possibly by the other party. That matters little if one is a truly subordinate Parliament. It happens, again and again, in Canada, that you have Liberals in command of some of the local Parliaments; the Conservatives in command of some of the others; and, we will say, the Conservatives in command of the Dominion Parliament. But it would matter vastly if you had one majority in your Imperial Parliament, drawn from your 45,000,000 people, and the party opposite were in the majority in your Parliament of 36,000,000 people. There would be a clash of two Parliaments, representing two party organisations, and I believe that under those circumstances your attempted distinctions, based on Acts of Parliament, for defining the power of the two Assemblies, would
practically become nugatory. As an. "historical matter, surely the whole history of federation teaches us the truth of what I am venturing to put. In the case of Germany, in the Constitution of 1871, there were some very elaborate clauses inserted with the object, so it was hoped, of preventing the dominance of Prussia. There was a Foreign Affairs Committee, for instance, set up, which gave a large voting power to Bavaria, Saxony, and Wurtemburg, as against Prussia. What was the effect and the result of that? The result was that not the written constitution but the realities had effect. Prussia found methods, imposed fictions on the Empire, and the result was that it was Prussia and not those States so elaborately protected which actually governed the foreign policy of the German Empire.
Take our own Empire. What do we find? In Canada you have two large Provinces, Quebec and Ontario, more or less equal in numbers. You have a number of smaller Provinces, and it is perfectly certain that neither of those great Provinces could, in effect, rule the whole Dominion, because in the contest with the other Province all the smaller Provinces would rally round. Therefore, you are secure against the crystallisation of power within the Dominion in any one Province. The same thing happens in Australia. There you Lave, in Melbourne and Sydney, two great cities, approximately equal. You have two great States based upon them—New South Wales and Victoria—and you have no prospect, hardly a possibility, of the rule of the Commonwealth of Australia by any one State. Take the case of the United States. It is obvious that, though New York is a State twice the size of Scotland, yet New York is but a small part of the total States of America. Take the case of Switzerland, on a smaller scale. There the same thing holds. Even the Canton of Berne is not supreme among the cantons. I say that where federation has worked, men have recognised the fact that you must have a reasonable balance, such that no one member of the federation can bully the remainder. The only exception that I know of, and that is an apparent exception, is the case of the United Netherlands, where the State of Holland had undoubtedly power. But there you were not dealing with nationalities. You had not the risk that Canada had to face with Quebec, or that we have to face in Ireland or even
Scotland. In truth, Holland really settled the whole policy of the United Netherlands. I do not think that Scotland would quite agree to have the whole policy of the United Kingdom settled by England.
Surely we do not want to throw away what we have achieved. For international purposes we are a unit, and surely it is the full determination, at any rate within this Island, of our citizens that we shall remain a unit when acting with other countries. In this War we have come through as a unit. Our object is not to go back, not to reverse the swing of history and go back to the condition of things when we had separate states, representing separate states in Scotland and England, at any rate, and separate nationalities in Wales and Ireland though not organised as states. Our object is to secure that we give the fullest effect to the unity of intention and will as expressed in this Parliament by relieving this Parliament of those local and not necessarily national duties that can be devolved upon the subordinate legislatures. We want greater union and not less union as the result of our devolution. Therefore, I believe that we should take a course such as that advocated by the right hon. and learned Member for Duncairn (Sir E. Carson), who thought the units should be, as far as possible, not national units. But there is no reason why some should not be national and others not national. Take the case of Canada, and consider the Province of Quebec. In Quebec you have a nationality—the French-Canadian—a complete nationality. The French-Canadian is not simply a Frenchman to-day; he separated from France before the Revolution. The French-Canadian is a nationality. In that Province of Quebec he has his own system of land law, his own system of family law, his own system of education, his own system in his relations to religion. All that was secured to him by treaty originally, and all that has been allowed to him in the system set up by the Act of Parliament which established the federation of Canada. It is perfectly possible to have a federation, as you have in Canada, in which you have one unit which is a nationality, and in which other units are not nationalities. Ontario, Manitoba, British Columbia, and the Maritime Provinces are all English-speaking Provinces; all belonging essentially to the same nationality, the English-Canadian.
Therefore, I do not see the slightest difficulty in having certain of our units here that are national, and certain others that are not national. I feel that the only result would be that, as in the case of Canada, the nationalities would be reduced to their proper proportion and not allowed an exaggerated importance. Surely, in the matter of settling the Irish question, we have this essential fact. I know full well that the Irish will not welcome this proposal, and that a certain portion, at any rate, of Ireland wishes either for independence or what is called Dominion self-government. But the difficulty of the Irish question for us is not in Ireland, it is in America and Australia. In Ireland you have only 3,000,000 people who belong to the discontented ranks of the population; 3,000,000 out of 45,000,000. But the importance of the Irish question as an international question comes from the fact that you have a great Irish party in America and in Australia. You have a system there of government by party under which the Irish make weight to be thrown either on one side or the other. There is the difficulty. But your devolution system is a complete answer to that. In America, Canada and Australia the principle of federation is believed in profoundly, and if we in this country say to Ireland we are going to establish a federal system in this country and you in Ireland if you can agree may be one unit, or if you do not agree you can be two units, but you shall have the same powers as the French in Quebec have, then I venture to say you have got that kind of logical answer to Irish agitation in the United States and Canada which you will find in no other way, and I believe it will go a very long way towards removing what is really the importance of the Irish question—that is the importance of it outside Ireland and not inside. I do not want to be dogmatic in regard to this matter. All we have asked for in the Amendment is that this question shall be considered, and that the question referred to the Parliamentary body which may be set up shall not be limited to the Nationalist basis as the Motion itself would limit it.
Suggestions have been made that you might divide England in such a way as to gain great benefit from the division. Let me suggest. I do not put it as a final idea, but suggest the division of London from the rest of the country—a
London vast enough for Greater London and far greater than the county council London, which only contains 4,500,000 out of the 8,000,000. Then there might be a division between agricultural England and the industrial North. The complaint of the agriculturists is that they have the most ancient and, in some ways, the most essential industry of this country, yet as the facts are to-day their legislation has to be got somehow with the consent of the vast urban majority in this country, and they are fortunate indeed if they do not get town interference with rustic matters. If you have a predominantly agricultural England as one-England, what would happen would be that year after year and Session after Session it would be possible for the Legislature to set up a standard of agricultural-law for a country predominantly agricultural, and it could shape its policy for agricultural purposes. Similarly, your industrial North, with other wants than those of London or of agricultural England, could legislate and so gradually shape common English law in a direction, best fitted to promote the industry of the North. What would be the effect of that? It would be that, as regards those industrial districts in the South which require-special legislation, the agricultural South; would look to the example of the North; which was making the running in an industrial direction, and industrial North, when it had to consider legislation for its agricultural districts, would have a standard set for it by the agricultural South. I venture to say that instead of getting an eternal system of compromise such as you get in this House, you would get some-thing which would make for an advance far more rapid than the advance you get out of any compromise. You would get. real power in the hands of agriculturists, to realise the needs of modern agriculture, and you would got real power in the hands, of modern industry, without interference from London to realise the material needs of the industrial community. We should get, too, that which we now gain only by looking to the legislation passed in our different Colonies and in America, and could compare the different expedients put forward here.
You would get all that under the conditions I am suggesting. Without suggesting we should necessarily divide the country into these three areas, I venture to put it, even although those areas would not represent separate nationalities, they
would represent separate interests. We talk of this Mother of Parliaments. We take ourselves back to Magna Charta and the time of Edward the First, but remember what England was in those days—the North a desert; Wales a wild man's land: England, for all practical purposes, the rich agricultural plain of the Midlands, East and South. London was not so far from the centre of that. It was a nation of farmers, about 2,000,000 of them, a, nation with one great industry, agriculture—for at that time we used to allow our shipping to be done for us—it was a nation of farmers of 2,000,000 inhabiting one plain, in the midst one market town (London) with this great tidal river coming up to it for trade. It was the simplest thing to establish a Parliament here—one King, one Parliament, one plain, one city, and merely villages elsewhere, one uniform nation. There is a simplicity about our history for that reason, and the hero of that history is this Parliament, which has evolved through these centuries, but which is now being ruined because of the tributary streams from Scotland and Ireland which have brought complexity to what was once so simple. We want to retain what is good in that splendid river. We want to adapt our conditions afresh and to assign to each region of the old England its Parliament; to agriculture, its Parliament; to this mighty London that has grown up, its Parliament; to that industrial North, which is the creation of the last two centuries, its Parliament,' to Scotland, which grew up in antagonism to this country, which has a nationalism largely derived from Bannockburn as well as a nationalism based on a great industry established in a relatively sterile land, its Parliament, and to Ireland—well, as to that it would be dangerous to speak.

Mr. R. McNEILL: Would my hon. Friend not go a little further and re-establish the Kingdom of Kent?

Mr. MACKINDER: I have told my hon. Friend he can establish what kingdoms the Parliamentary body may choose. I suggest to him that after all Kent is not a small part, in fact, of Greater London. Modern facts do amount to that.
The question has been put forward of your having a reformed House of Lords. If that means that you are to have anything in the nature of a Senate, and that is the only meaning I can attach to it, if the House of Lords as a Senate is to be recruited from the States, then surely it is
emphatically necessary that the great predominant majority in that body should not be drawn from one State only, but that it should be from the whole federation.
All I ask, is that hon. Members should look at the facts and not be content with mere Acts of Parliament. I admit it may be inconvenient to divide England, but I venture to assert it would be inconvenient to have an undivided ling-land in your Federation. Some of my friends will say, "You are surely on the horns of a dilemma and you imperil the whole idea of federation." That may be so, but I do not believe it. If you are going to securely establish your federation then you must face these facts, and you must recognise their reality. All our efforts at Home Rule have hitherto failed because we have not recognised these facts. We have been attempting to give a special position to one portion of the Kingdom, and we have tried to erect a convention, a mere paper connection, to be maintained by Act of Parliament. Why did Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who was in many things so wise before his time, why did he, from the first, advocate Home Rule all round? It was because he saw there was safety in numbers. In the number of subordinate Parliaments there is safety, for the majority of subordinate Parliaments will be able to exercise restraint on the recalcitrant Parliament that would cut itself adrift or otherwise misbehave. If you adhere to an undivided English Parliament you have lost all opportunity of obtaining that balance of power within your system which is the reality that must underlie any printed document creating a constitution.

Sir RYLAND ADKINS: I do not know whether the House is glad or sorry that my hon. Friend who has just spoken should have started another hare which has brought into this controversy already sufficiently important, conflicting new ideas as to the slicing of England. For my own part I hope that Members in all parts of this House who were prepared before the hon. Member spoke to support the Resolution will not be hindered from doing so by their enjoyment of his speech, by their delight in its rhetoric, or by their appreciation of the way in which he managed to drown facts in most elaborate sentences of delightful fancy. Not soon will some of us forget his picture of the true Medieval England, this peaceful homogeneous plain, with a solitary city, yclept London, in which there were no
differences between town and country in which all was woven in one piece, one calm uniform, simple texture, knowing nothing of the difficulties which modern life so unhappily brought. The passage in which he described that will remain with me till mind and memory flee, but it shows how a perversion of historical perspective can give as much delight as the fairy tales of our childhood. The facts, as they are known to every Member of this House and to the vast majority of the public outside is that mediaeval history in this as in most countries has been marked by a most intense divergence, generally amounting to animosity between town and country. Every urban community looked on the district outside as its enemy and prey. Nothing was more difficult in the welding of our State than the slow coalescence of urban and rural international life, and the efforts of statesmen, of King and of Parliament to work for the true unity of the State, instead of looking at sectional and geographical differences. And now, in the twentieth century, there comes down the hon. and learned Gentleman, adorning his discourse with every kind of picturesque illustration, nearly all inaccurate, to find an argument, or where be cannot find it to invent it, in order that the House of Commons may be induced to adopt a form of devolution which, whatever else it does, will cut our England into three parts. I think much water will run down this historic river, which I have no power to describe in the glowing terms of my hon. and learned Friend, before that ideal is realised. London, forsooth, we are told, is to be one, and what a London—Kent, apparently merely its front garden, and, I suppose, Essex its backyard—and, therefore, London, with a circle of subordinate suburbs stretching from sea to sea, is to be one-third of the State. We are all familiar, reading history less coloured than the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech, with the part that the city of Paris played in the French Revolution. The power of the city of Paris would be trifling compared with the power of this gigantic and elaborated London in the state of things to which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred. Then there is the serious argument that you are to have an agricultural England stretching how far north we are not told. Is the boundary to be the Trent? Is it to be Birmingham? Fancy Birmingham partially digested in an agricultural Eng-
land! And "then beyond that we are to have a northern industrial area in which the sparse districts of sterile laud which still rear sheep and grow oats are to realise their deep subordination under the teeming artisans who tyrannise over them. This is to be the tripartite England of the future.
I hope the grave and serious question which the House, not before it is time, is asked to discuss to-day, will, although adorned by this excursus, not be led away by it to attach importance to this fantasy of political destruction. I hope the House will concentrate its attention, as it has already done for several hours, on the high and far-reaching issue as to whether we are to apply to the problem of Great Britain and Ireland the federal method. I would address the House as-one who has spent the greater part of his life in trying to do some work in local government and ask it to consider most favourably what I would call Home Rule for England. We had the case of Home Rule for Scotland presented with great charm in a maiden speech. The arguments for Home Rule for Ireland are familiar to all of us. Is it not time that England and the case for its Home Rule was considered with equal care? For what happens? In this House year after year the Government of England as a whole has less time given to it and has less done to forward it. I am not talking, of course, of legislation. I am talking of government. When I first entered this House thirteen years ago we spent double the time in discussing and passing Estimates which were largely concerned with the internal government of this country than is given to them to-day. Take Department after Department. The Local Government Board, now reborn as the Ministry of Health, the Board of Education, the Home Office, the Board of Trade—the greater part of their administrative work is work controlling the government of England, and yet it is only for a few odd hours in each Session, and then only by concerted action on the part of large numbers of Members of the House, that there is any reasoned and continuous investigation as to how that government is carried on and how it is to be linked up with the local government of the country over which it has such great power. If I may speak of my own experience of county council work and associations, what one notices year after year is the constant and rapid growth in what I may call the intensive cultiva-
tion of local government in this country. For one thing that had to be done thirty years ago there are now twenty. That can only be done if the central authority in each Department is kept under vigilant Parliamentary oversight and control, and yet all through these years the control by Parliament of all these Government Departments has grown less and not more. In fact, there has been growing up for several generations that which approaches to a silent revolution in government in this country.
Our country, almost alone among the great countries of the world, has had a principle of government in which the amateur has always had predominance over the professional. Unlike great Empires in other parts of the world we have never been governed either by a soldiery or by a bureaucracy. Eight away back to those ages to which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred with such vividness, as I take it the true line of the development of the British Constitution was the constant assertion by Parliament, as soon as it became articulate, of powers over kings and statesmen and bureaucrats, so that those chosen by the people, who, whatever else they were, were in a sense amateur and not professional administrators, should have and exercise constantly year after year both control and initiative in the government of the country. For this was our Constitution praised by philosophers of all countries. For this was Britain the envy of each State on the Continent which gradually grew out of tyranny into freedom. And yet in the last thirty or forty years, while in so many ways we have broadened the basis of the Constitution, while so many more of our fellow-citizens have their share in votes, in speeches, and in influence, the power of the House of Commons in controlling Government has dwindled year by year. Is it not part of our duty to recover for our race that special note and principle and method of government which has been so successful in the ages that came before us, and that can only be done by the creation of a subordinate legislature for England as a great national unit, just as for Scotland and for Ireland, in recovering for England by means of a subordinate legislature that which would exercise constant and vigilant oversight for the administration of the country, and which would provide that initiative which may be wanting in technical knowledge, which may be wanting in
the accomplishments of the expert, but which would have that vitality which only comes when it comes from a popular assembly representing the real tendencies and desires of the people. Therefore I most earnestly support, on the grounds that it is necessary to complete and to vitalise local government in this country, the proposal now before the House, and, so far from this leading to undue parochialism, the principle of the creation of subordinate legislatures would set free this Mother of Parliaments for even greater and higher duties.
It is a singular thing that in that very period which has seen our grip of local government weakened the interest taken by the House in matters of international politics has grown weaker too. There were fewer discussions of foreign policy in this House than there had been twenty years previously. There was far more discussion of foreign policy in the days of Lord Palmerston than there has been since. There was far more discussion in the period of the great French war than in the days of Lord Palmerston, and far more discussion still than that in the days of Chatham and Walpole. The fact is, that the development of Parliamentary procedure and practice has not only weakened the grip of Parliament for internal administration, but it has removed from Parliament, largely without intention, but partly perhaps by design, the myriad opportunities of taking a quick and vivid interest in international problems, and considering the spread of education, considering the developments of the Press, is it not most remarkable that there is probably less diffused knowledge, at any rate, among those classes which have had educational advantages, about the politics of Europe in the last twenty years than there was among our great grandsires a century ago. If you have a subordinate Legislature relieving the House of Commons from so much of the work it tries to do, but has not time to do, you are giving it more time to concentrate its attention on these international matters which are becoming more and not less important as the years go on.
When science has abolished space, when we are scarcely any more an island, when we are more interwoven with other nations than we ever were by all the endless ties of trade and commerce and competing ideals, it is surely of the greatest consequence that there should be far more opportunities for this House to discuss
such matters and strengthen and control Ministers by the informed opinion of the House of Commons than has been possible in recent years. Why are we the only legislature that has no Foreign Affairs Committee, independent or semi-independent of the Government of the day? There would be scope for developments of that kind which would strengthen the democratic hold on international matters if this House had the time to give to them, and it can only get the time to give to them by the freedom gained by the creation of a subordinate legislature. Therefore on all these grounds, to assist and to vitalise local government, to give this House greater opportunity of dealing with Imperial and International matters, it is surely desirable that there should be a Committee or Conference set up directly to see whether it is not possible to devise methods of devolution which would preserve the national unity of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, methods which, if they ended in the creation of these subordinate bodies, would yet create such bodies as would really draw to them men of long experience and. of practical wisdom, because the work they would have to do would be worth the doing For these reasons I support the proposal, and I trust this is one of those rare occasions on which the overwhelming feeling of the House in favour of the proposal will not be allowed to ebb away in mere expression, but will be the foundation of wise and considered action.

8.0 P.M.

Mr. WALSH: I listened with great pleasure to the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Long), and I am bound to say that I have heard very few speeches which in my opinion placed such decent arguments before the House. I believe also that the views put forward by the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. and learned Member (Sir Ryland Adkins) do nearly meet the desires of the great mass of citizens in this country. There can be no doubt that since 1906 there has been a growing feeling that Parliament——

Orders of the Day — ROYAL ASSENT.

Message to attend the Lords Commissioners.

The House went, and, having returned,

Mr. SPEAKER: reported the Royal Assent to—

1. Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1919.
2. Ministry of Health Act, 1919.
3. Scottish Board of Health, 1919.
4 Board of Education Scheme (Crossley and Porter Orphan Home and School) Confirmation Act, 1919.
5. Swansea Harbour Act, 1919.

Orders of the Day — FEDERAL DEVOLUTION.

Question again proposed,
That, with a view to enabling the Imperial Parliament to devote more attention to the general interests of the United Kingdom and, in collaboration with the other Governments of the Empire, to matters of common Imperial concern, this House is of opinion that the time has come for the creation of subordinate legislatures within the United Kingdom, and that to this end the Government, without prejudice to any proposals it may have to make with regard to Ireland, should forthwith appoint a Parliamentary body to consider and report—

(1)upon a measure of Federal Devolution applicable to England, Scotland, and Ire land, defined in its general outlines by existing differences in law and administration between the three countries;
(2)upon the extent to which these differences are applicable to Welsh conditions and requirements; and
(3)upon the financial aspects and requirements of the measure."

Mr. WALSH: I was suggesting that during the last fourteen or fifteen years this House has been tremendously overworked, and although responsible Ministers have done their very best to expedite business, we have been utterly unable to deal with the needs of the various countries to which we are supposed to attend. All kinds of methods have been tried. I remember, in 1906, it was suggested that, except in the case of Ministers, speeches of Members should be limited to ten minutes. I am extremely sorry that the House did not accept such a suggestion. For years certain Members of the House seemed to think that they were entitled to go on speaking almost eternally, and that men who did not put forward anything like the same pretentions ought to be glad to listen to their rhetoric. There are 730 Members of this House, many of them well versed in different matters affecting the State, in commerce, law—I need not develop the particular matters in which Members of this House are versed. But whatever we do we have always been
met with a gradual increase of business—the guillotine, the kangaroo, the method of putting the closure into operation by compartments—millions of money, indeed thousands of millions, over a number of years have been voted without any debate at all, and, of course, it is impossible to say to our constituents that such a method should be continued. We must recognise that the whole conditions of political life have changed completely, and that the various nationalities should have conferred upon them the right of legislating in those matters which are peculiarly theirs. Take the case of the Scottish Estimates. When they come before the House every English Member leaves the House. There is not the slightest attempt to apply the knowledge of English Members to these Scottish subjects, and the whole matter is left entirely to the hands of the Scottish Members. The whole of us, English Members, from Newcastle right down to the South of England, simply take a day and go away, and a comparatively handful of Scottish Members are left, men who are keenly, and properly keenly, interested in those matters relating to Scotland.
The same thing applies to Ireland. We have known during the last fourteen or fifteen years that when the Irish Estimates come on we go out and leave the whole matter entirely with the Irish Members. It is only when the Government desires to raise objections to the arguments put forward by the Irish Members that the House takes any serious interest in the matter. But it is very much worse when the House is called on to deal with Imperial legislation or responsibilities. When I was young we used to be told that India was the finest jewel in the British Crown. It is almost a complete hypocrisy. Whenever the Indian Estimates came before us the House was nearly always empty. I do not know any problems in which the responsibilities of Government are so great as those affecting India at the present time. But in the past, when the Indian Estimates have come before the House, the responsible Minister has been speaking to a very small body of Members. The same thing applies to the Crown Colonies. We have hardly ever taken any notice of the conditions affecting them. We have acted as though these are matters that might very well be left to the Ministry. After all, I believe that we ought to give to nationality a greater responsibility and greater power than we
have given in the past. I believe that a spirit of nationality can be given to a great extent to Scotland and to Wales, and that it would be perfectly consistent with the great Imperial responsibility which we can entrust to the Imperial Parliament. Take the case of Scotland. Is there a single person who can deny that the Scottish people can be perfectly true to the great British connection, can be "fervent supporters of a real and true Imperialism, the Imperialism which helps the whole of the British people to lead in the development of civilisation, and yet at the same time be perfectly true to the spirit of nationality?
We need not say too much in favour of the Scottish people, but everybody must admit that as a body they have taken a great part in the development of the Empire. Their loyalty is undoubted. They surely ought to be given full power of governing themselves in those matters which are peculiarly their own. In other words, they can have a great love for that true Imperial bond which connects Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Great Britain, and there is nothing at all inconsistent between that and a love of their own country, which, after all, is a matter of the spirit. That is really how we ought to look at these things. If Scottish Members are willing to have a direct responsibility in the work that rests upon them as Scottish Members, why should we compel them to come in many cases hundreds of miles from the northern part of their country to this Assembly? I am sure it has been a great waste of physical and mental energy to come here to deal with matters which could just as well have been decided by the Scottish people in Edinburgh or in Glasgow, in a Parliament dealing with matters that were peculiarly local to Scotland. Often they have been called upon to travel hundreds of miles under all kinds of atmospheric conditions and at tremendous cost, only to find when they reached here that the routine of the House made it quite impossible for Scottish matters to be dealt with by the Scottish people, and that in many cases there was a most heart-breaking process day by day and week by week which made it utterly impossible to get on with the business. There is a real doubt developing in the minds of the people that Parliament is not in earnest in this kind of thing. The arguments I have used apply equally to Wales. Nobody can deny how keenly they feel as Welshmen that they should have the
right of managing those matters which are peculiarly Welsh matters. But that does not in any way lessen their high patriotism and their love for the British connection. We should, in so far as we can, let them deal with matters that are peculiarly their own. We could thus relieve the burden of this huge House enormously, and the folks who send us to Parliament would be very much better satisfied that we really were in earnest in doing the work they had committed to us.
I am bound to say, however, that when we begin to talk about breaking up England into three or four bodies I should regret it very much indeed, and I shall certainly vote against any measure that tampers with the unity of England. I am not going to follow the rhetoric of the Scottish Member who spoke in the tone of Boanerges, and pointed out the desirability of breaking up England into three or four parts. I believe that the English people have for centuries led the world, that they have led the civilisation of the world. It is perfectly true that our forefathers were illiterate; it is perfectly true that Parliament did not represent the vast body of people. It is quite true that many of them were little better than slaves at the time. It is equally true that the sense of the English people was that they were a united body, not very much later than the-time of. Henry the Fifth, and undoubtedly from the time of Henry the Fourth. In my honest opinion it would be the greatest possible mistake to break up that unity. I believe that the English people represent the greatest factor and the greatest power in the development of civilisation, and in the progress of the world, and I should view with the greatest regret any interference with that wonderful English spirit. The English, of course, are a generous people; they are a kindly people. They are willing to help the Scottish people, they are not desirous of standing in the way of the Welsh people, the fact is not that the English people themselves are incapable of the high statesmanship that has been shown by the Welsh and the Scottish, but that the English people have always been generous, and that if the Scottish people are doing very well, and the Welsh people too—if all the high offices have been as a matter of fact held by the Scottish or by the Welsh, there has been very little complaint on the part of the English people. The English name and character
has spread itself throughout the world, and I do believe with all our faults it is the greatest factor in the civilisation of the world. It is because of that our party is going to support this Motion. It is, after all, a matter for inquiry.
Surely when we recognise how magnificently the Dominions, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of Canada and the Dominion of New Zealand came to the support of the Mother Country in its time of greatest possible need, we are bound to realise that new problems will arise and problems of the greatest significance which will place upon the Imperial Parliament a kind of responsibility we never had before. The world is entirely new. We have, for example, the problems that will result from the navigation of the air. The whole world will soon be encompassed by great aerial machines. There are a thousand and one things possible as science knows no end. Tremendous developments have taken place and it is really of the greatest possible importance and necessity that we should bring together, in a mutual family, so to speak, those Dominions and those members of the British race which have-rendered such magnificent services during the last four or five troublous years. Surely when we think of what they have; done that conclusion is forced upon us. Not very long ago it was thought that we really ought to cut ourselves adrift from the Colonies. It was said in the middle-part and indeed the later part of the 19th century that the Colonies were a great burden upon us, and they were called '' those wretched Colonies," and were regarded by some people as a mill stone round our necks. I cannot imagine a single politician now who would fail to recognise how wonderful has been the development of those Colonies which used to be convict settlements and were so regarded. We know perfectly well there are wonderful possibilities in their development, and because we believe they should take a definite and responsible part in a great Imperial Council we ask that in taking part in the development of civilisation and enlightenment that no responsibility shall be placed uopn them in the decision of which they have not taken a full part. I believe myself that an Imperial Council will have to be established, and that there will have to be subordinate legislatures. How can we leave Ireland alone? It is
utterly impossible. It is perfectly true that our Imperial position is weakened in the eyes of other nations because, year after year, we fail to give decent self-government to the Irish people. No statesman can be condemned. It is a problem which I am quite sure the British people would gladly solve. I do not think there is one man out of a hundred thousand but would gladly do his best to solve this problem which has caused such an infinity of trouble to statesmen for the last century. An inquiry can do no harm. We may very well find that a Dominion Parliament might meet the necessities and the desires of the Irish people less such exceptions that might follow from the inquiry. In any case, it-is quite clear that we cannot for the good name of the British people allow Ireland to occupy a position which is really pathetic, and which, of course, lessens the good will entertained by other nations in respect of our treatment of that unhappy country. I think an inquiry can do no possible harm.

Brigadier-General COCKERILL: The House has listened with very great interest to the speech of the hon. Member who has just addressed it. There was one observation from him which especially appealed to me, and in which he said that some of us were very patient in listening. I can assure him, if he will only let me know when he intends to speak, he will find in me an extremely happy listener. The First Lord of the Admiralty, in his speech, mentioned a point which rather bears on the same question. He pointed out that, as a result of the way in which our business is divided to-day, and as a consequence of such an amount of business being taken upstairs instead of on the floor, Members, and especially new Members, have but rare opportunities of addressing the House. I agree with him that that is a very great disadvantage under the new Procedure. New Members are not able to grow habituated to the atmosphere of the House, as they were in the old days, and the result is, possibly, that they are not able to express themselves on the interests of their constituencies in the manner they were able to do in the old days. It is common cause that some devolution is essential, and it is common cause that to-day most of the work that falls upon this House cannot be undertaken adequately. It is common cause, too, I think, that the questions which
must be devolved, if any are devolved, upon the secondary Legislatures are questions of a local nature and questions which, in every Act which has constituted a Dominion Parliament have been described as questions of a local and private nature. I think it is common cause, also, that all those topics must, if any are, be devolved to the local Legislatures. The First Lord of the Admiralty expressed his approval of what is, after all, the main point in this Motion, and that is the idea of setting up a Committee to advise in regard to this question. My regret is that ho did not go-further at once and, considering the unanimity which apparently prevails in the House, set up, as has been set up in the case of all the Constitutions of the Empire, a Conference immediately which should be charged with the duty of recording resolutions on which, ultimately, a Bill could be based to express the views of this House.
A few weeks ago I tabled a Motion which I venture to think would have been a very good introduction to this Debate. I obviously could not raise now the arguments I should then have raised had the opportunity fallen to me, nor, indeed, do I desire to do so, because I hope to have an opportunity on the Colonial Estimates of touching on the subject of my Motion at a later date. But it was suggested in that Motion that the time had perhaps come for the devolution to a separate Parliament and to a separate Cabinet of matters that concerned only the United Kingdom. Personally, I do not share the-view of the First Lord of the Admiralty that if we had approached this question from that end we should have been putting the cart before the horse. I cannot help thinking that the House must have noticed, as I have noticed, that in the League of Nations which has been set up you have actually an attempt being made to co-ordinate the common interests of all the nations in the world at a common council table. Surely if it was possible to set up a council of the League of Nations, and what almost amounts to a Parliament of the World, it should have been possible before that to set up a similar assembly to deal with the affairs of this Empire at a round table. But be that as it may, it seems to me that it is essential that upon the League of Nations the representatives of the British Empire should speak with one voice in matters affecting vital Imperial interests. Similarly, it seems to me, and having that in view, that
the time is ripe to organise and to create some central council which in the same -way shall discuss, co-ordinate, and harmonise the common interests of this great Empire, and since the sovereignty inheres in these Houses of Parliament only to deal with these very large questions, it seems to me that it should have been a possible course in the first instance to have separated from the Imperial Parliament all those questions which are really and fundamentally not of Imperial interest, but of interest to the United Kingdom only, and to devolve upon some Parliament of the United Kingdom questions affecting the United Kingdom only. It might then, I think, have been a simpler matter to have gone a step further and to have decided which questions might safely be further devolved upon Parliaments or assemblies to discuss and consider and decide questions of a local interest.
There is, it has seemed to me, a very marked ambiguity in the term "Imperial Parliament." I used to notice it in the old controversies which perhaps are dead, or perhaps only sleeping, an echo of which perhaps we heard in the House when the right hon. Gentleman sitting opposite me was speaking. In those controversies it always seemed to me that there was some ambiguity as to what hon. and right hon. Members meant when they used this term "Imperial Parliament." This Parliament is imperial in the sense that it has some control over Imperial affairs. I am no constitutional lawyer, and I trench on these matters with great diffidence, but it has seemed to me that there are questions with which this Parliament is accustomed to deal, so far as they relate to the United Kingdom, with an authority and a power wholly different, wholly superior to what they deal with when questions of interest to the Dominions are concerned. We have devolved upon the Parliaments of the Dominions large questions of their own self-government, and as a result the Imperial Parliament, so far as it is Imperial, really has little power, except, I believe, though I am open to correction, the power of disallowing certain Ordinances which may be passed in the various Dominions, but which this Parliament and the Crown would probably never dream of disallowing. But when you come to use the term "Imperial Parliament" in connection with the affairs of the United Kingdom, you come to a power and authority which is in-
defeasible and absolute, and it seems to me that one wants to keep these two distinct uses of the term "Imperial Parliament." they may not be accurate, but they are in very common use, and are terms which really have very wide differences of meaning.
The question I ask myself is whether, in the Motion which is before the House now, it is the intention to retain the Parliament of the United Kingdom as a Parliament which shall deal with all the main questions affecting the affairs of this United Kingdom, and that, too, even when, if ever, a true Imperial Parliament be set up. I think the answer is certainly in the affirmative. I think it is certainly the intention of the Mover of the Resolution to keep unimpaired the powers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and devolve only subordinate and purely local affairs to the other Parliament. But I think the House will agree with me that we should do nothing to interfere, in anything that we might do now in reconsidering the constitution of this country and Empire, with the ultimate reconstruction of the machinery of the Government of the Empire. I think there is one thing we must recognise when such reconstruction takes place. In my judgment that reconstruction is urgent and essential, but we have heard to-night from the First Lord of the Admiralty, who shares my view as to the essential necessity of this reconstruction, that he perhaps is not so hopeful as I am that it may be undertaken sooner than some of us expect. We must recognise that in any such reconstruction the Dominions will not consent to be represented in the Imperial Parliament, when it is set up, except on terms of absolute equality with the people of the United Kingdom. That in itself, in my judgment, makes it essential to retain unimpaired the power and authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and that Parliament must take care to retain all those powers which in Canada, Australia and South Africa are, by general consent, retained in the central Government.
In the Dominions, when Federalisation took place, the movement was one of centralisation. In this country, if we devolve any powers upon subordinate legislatures, we shall be moving in the reverse direction. I do not myself attach very great importance to that. It might be represented that this was a movement towards disunion and towards disruption.
I do not think it could fairly so be represented. The object of the Motion is, I think, identical with the object statesmen had in the Dominions. The object in the Dominions was to centralise all matters of common concern in the Dominions, and to redistribute all those matters which were of local concern. That, too, is our intention here. We seek to centralise matters of common concern—if I under-stand the Motion aright—and to redistribute all those matters which are merely of local concern. I think on many sides the view is held that local autonomy is only favourable to a larger unity where local sentiment in the parts composing the whole is weak, or where local sentiment in the parts is overshadowed and governed by a wider patriotism. In the Dominions Constitution the stronger the national sentiment that has prevailed in the component parts, the closer has been the union that has been ultimately developed. In Australia, you had a number of separate States grown up under separate governors, with separate institutions. Each State was extremely jealous of its own institutions and anxious to retain them, but those States were, I think, in no sense national. In the case of Australia, for example, there was always inherent in each State a feeling of wider patriotism towards Australia as a whole—a feeling which has been very strongly evinced during the course of this great War. In Australia, it might be mentioned, although there was no national feeling in the State, yet when the Constitution was framed, they took care that every State should retain in its own hands every power that it had had previously, except such as might be definitely withdrawn.

Major-General Sir NEWTON MOORE: The States created the Commonwealth.

Brigadier-General COCKERILL: I do not think the hon. and gallant Gentleman was in the House when I was mentioning that matter. I pointed out that the movement was in the reverse direction. But the States in Australia, although they had no national sentiment behind them—for I do not think it can be pretended that the feeling in Victoria or Queensland, for example, had reached anything that could be described as a national feeling—yet when they came together, they were careful to retain all those powers, except such as were stipulated to be withdrawn from them. In Canada, in the same way, you had a strong national sentiment I think
only in one of the component parts of what now forms the great Dominion of Canada. And there you find that the central Government deals with all matters which are not expressly assigned to the provincial Governments and, among the matters which are expressly assigned to the provincial Governments are all matters such as under this Motion we seek to devolve upon subordinate legislatures, that is to say, matters of a merely local or private nature. In South Africa you had the national sentiment more strongly developed than in any other of the Dominions. In each of the great States—if you can call them so—which go to make up the Union of South Africa, you had a very strong national sentiment—a national sentiment which cannot have been the less in the years immediately following the great war between themselves and this country. And yet there, where you had. the national sentiment the stronger, you find that when they came together to form a union, they took care to make that union as close as it could possibly be made, and the provincial Governments are permitted to deal only with such matters as are directly delegated to them, and though they include matters of local and private concern, the decision as to what are matters of local and private concern rests with the Governor-General in Council.
9.0 P.M.
Of course, the conclusion that I draw from those facts is that where you have, as you have in this United Kingdom, a strong national sentiment in each of the component parts of the Kingdom, you would be wise, I think, to take account of that fact, and when you give autonomy to the subordinate legislatures you should take care to limit it very clearly and closely to matters of purely local and private concern, and you should, I think, keep in the hands of the Central Government—in this case, in the hands of this-Parliament and of the United Kingdom and the Empire—very closely the final decision as to what questions should or should not be dealt with in those legislatures. Of course, there were other factors affecting the situation in the various Dominions. In Australia, though I speak again with diffidence in the presence of the hon. and gallant Gentleman behind me, who has had so much greater experience than I have had, I think it is the fact that these States had grown up, each one, owing to the immense distances between them, and owing, in the first years of their
existence, to the lack of means of communication, had grown up around some major port which was in itself in direct communication with the United Kingdom. Each was jealous, therefore, of that inter-communication. You had not any central authority in Australia. You had the powers of the States set around the circumference of the country.
You had precisely the opposite case in South Africa. There the main interests of the country are centrally situated. The main point in dispute in South Africa was the channel of communication from the central part of the Dominion to the coast, and thence to the outer world. The consequence of that was that in South Africa you had a tendency towards central union and centralised government, the extent of which perhaps does not exist equally in the Dominion and the Commonwealth of Australia. But I should not weary the House with all these details, important as they might be to those who sit on this Committee and have to consider the question of the subjects with which the subordinate Legislatures should deal, but that I want to express a note of warning in regard to the setting up of Parliaments of separate nationalities in this country, unless you keep the central Government of sufficient strength. I might remind the House that you had that previous to the passing of the Act under which, some fifty years ago, the Dominion of Canada was brought into existence. But the Act itself was based upon certain Resolutions which were passed at the Quebec Conference. That Conference took place in 1864, almost immediately after or during the closing period of the American Civil War. Every member of that Conference must have had ever present in his mind the causes of the American Civil War. They must have foreseen the danger that had accrued there in allowing any kind of subordinate powers to the component parts of the Federation. Probably similar considerations were in the mind of those who framed the South African Constitution. I am speaking rather longer than I intended, but this question of nationality is important. The view I have put before the House is strengthened by events in Scandinavia, where you had an autonomous and national Norway seceding from a federated union in response to national feeling. Similarly, in Hungary and Bohemia you see the same tendency.
Important as this question of nationality is, there have been other practical reasons which, not only in the Dominions and the Empire, but also in the United States of America, have been tending, as I think, towards centralisation of government rather than to the entrusting to the subordinate legislatures of excessive powers. The annihilation of distance by road, rail, and flight, and the extension of trade connections, has made it essential in those countries, and have led to a gradual strengthening of the central Government. I think it is really not open to argument that both in the Dominions and the United States the tendency leans toward entrusting the central Government with ever-increasing powers and to deprive the local States of the powers they already possess. That being so, it seems to me that we should be very wise in this country very carefully to consider and very cautiously to act in decentralising the powers possessed by this House and in handing them over to these subordinate Legislatures. The true solution of our difficulties—difficulties which have been so well expressed by previous speakers—on the one hand of overloading the Parliament of the United Kingdom with matters of purely local interest, and on the other hand with matters of mainly Imperial concern—the true solution is to keep the power of devolution in the hands of the central Parliament of the Kingdom, and in devolving powers upon subordinate Legislatures to limit those powers very strictly to local and private affairs. In addition to that I confess that I hope and think that before many years are past that this House will be taking on the further task which I think is essential if its labours are to be properly crowned with success, the task of creating the machinery of a Central Imperial Council or Parliament in order to negotiate agreements between the various nations that compose the Empire on all those large questions which are really wholly of Imperial concern—those questions of trade, defence, foreign affairs, and all those other questions which affect the inter relations of the component parts of this Empire.

Sir ROBERT THOMAS: I have listened to this Debate with very considerable interest, and I particularly appreciate the speech of the Member for the Ince Division, because he paid the little country to which I belong a very happy compliment. At the same time, I think he did claim
rather too much magnanimity for the country to which he belongs. As a matter of fact, when the hon. Member speaks of magnanimity he should apply that to the Welsh nation, because we can truly say that we deserted the plains of England for the mountains of Wales so that the English could be happy in this sunny land where we live now. I am not altogether sure whether the time really has arrived for the discussion of this very great question. The hands of the Government have been very full, not in considering Home Rule for these islands, but in putting an end to German rule; and, although I am a Home Ruler, I would rather have seen a final and complete settlement in regard to German rule of the world before we paid attention to the very great question of Home Rule for these islands. But as the question has been forced upon us, I put down an Amendment on the Paper. I am not going to speak to that Amendment to-night, but I want to speak on the general question. I put that Amendment down because I realised that in this Motion the little country of Wales was overlooked. The Motion merely deals with Scotland and Ireland, and I think I have a right to claim that the little country to which I belong—gallant little Wales—has every right, when the question of Devolution is discussed, to be Considered at least on a level with Scotland and Ireland. There are many reasons for that. In the first place Wales has played no mean part in bringing this War to a triumphant conclusion, from the Prime Minister, a brilliant son of Wales, down to the humble Tommy, who gave the Germans every reason to respect him. I therefore say that, in view of the patriotism and loyalty of the Welsh nation towards the British Empire, we have a right to be placed on the same level as Scotland and Ireland. Then there is the question of language. I do not think there are many Scotsmen here to-night who can claim to be able to speak Gaelic. Although I am a Welshman born outside of Wales, I have taken the trouble to learn my mother tongue, and I could speak to this assembly in. Welsh just as well as in English; and I may say that there are very few Welshmen in Wales or out of it, in England or in Patagonia, who are not able to speak their mother tongue. With regard to Patagonia, it is an interesting fact, which may not be generally known, that there are thousands of Welsh families who have settled there,
Patagonia being a province of the Argentine Republic; They have their own Welsh chapels, and I am sure it will surprise the House to hear that hundreds of them only know the Welsh language and the Spanish language; they do not know the English language. Nevertheless, there are no more loyal people to the British Empire than the Welsh people of Patagonia. I think the same applies to all parts of Wales. During this War and during all previous wars Wales has always been a loyal part of the British Empire. Of course, I must admit that, although we have strong claims for Home Rule in Wales, it would be unreasonable to claim that we should have any preferential treatment. I can quite see that before we could claim Home Rule the Irish question must be settled. We can only have Homo Rule when Federal Home Rule is brought about, and obviously Federal Home Rule would be hopelessly incomplete until the Irish problem is solved, and until that unhappy country is brought into the British Empire as a self-governing part of that Empire. When that is going to take place I do not know. Some ill-prophets say it will take years before we can hope to bring forward a Home Rule Bill which will satisfy the Irish. I am speaking now individually, and not for the Welsh party to which I belong. I see a smile on the face of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, who is the Chairman of our party, but I am not committing my party when I say that, speaking personally, I feel that we in Wales in the meantime should advocate strongly that there should be a Secretary of State for Wales. In passing, I may say that I very much regret, in regard to the Health Bill, that we were not offered an Assistant-Secretary for Wales. I think that would have been a, generous act and a small compliment to our little nation. It was not done. I certainly do think that we ought to have a Secretary of State for Wales in this great work of reconstruction that is now going on. Under the Health Bill a separate Board has been allotted to Wales, but that really means Whitehall government. Scotland has a special Home Rule Bill, and in all essentials, as far as health is concerned, Scotland has Home Rule.

Mr. HOPKINS: Question!

Notice taken that forty Members were not present; House counted; and forty Members being found present—

Sir R. THOMAS: What I was trying to make out was that, while we are waiting for a system of Federal Home Rule, we should have for Wales a Secretary of State, so as to co-ordinate those Departments which will be set up in Wales under the work of reconstruction, such as Health, Insurance, Housing, Education, and Agriculture, may be co-ordinated by a Secretary of State who, I hope, will be a Welshman, and who would understand the aspirations of Welshmen and would appreciate the Welsh peculiarities. We admit that we have peculiarities. What nation has not? The peculiarities of the various parts of the British Empire make for its efficiency, and I think that the peculiarities of Wales ought to be considered and studied. If we are allowed to develop in our own peculiar way on our own national lines in our home affairs, I think it would make not only for the good of Wales, but also for the benefit of the British Empire, to which we are all so proud to belong.

Major WARING: I think this House should be grateful to the hon. Member who brought this Motion forward, not only because it has enabled us to discuss this important question, but because it has enabled us to hear two speeches which, I think, are extremely important, namely, the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Duncairn (Sir E. Carson) and the speech of the First Lord of the Admiralty. I think those speeches opened the door through which we can see a solution to that problem which has baffled this House and this Legislature for generations. Furthermore, I think that this Debate is interesting and useful from the fact that it has shown up till now an absolute unanimity of opinion in favour of this Motion that a Committee of Inquiry should beset up. No one appeared to be satisfied with the present state of things except the right hon. Gentleman who represents the Scottish Universities (Sir H. Craik), who is the only one who has spoken against the Motion. Certain Members are not satisfied and could not be satisfied with the present state of things. At every turn, as was indicated by the First Lord of the Admiralty, people are becoming sick of these delays, and there are people who are endeavouring to secure by unconstitutional means reforms which ought to be settled by this Legislature. This Parliament is so overloaded that even your Grand Committee system has been of no avail at all, and speeches show that hon. Members them-
selves are greatly discontented with the system of Grand Committees, under which measures of first-class importance are sent upstairs, and these Committees are so constituted that hon. Members who are most interested in these particular questions frequently do not find a place on those Committees, and those measures are considered by hon. Members who are often indifferent to those particular Bills, with the result that it is frequently difficult to form a quorum, and those measures are inadequately discussed, and bureaucracy reigns supreme at the present time.
We heard the other day a very able speech delivered by the hon. Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton). He referred to certain Egyptian questions from first-hand knowledge, and he told us how there were Egyptian gentlemen who felt very keenly the lack of interest taken by this Assembly in the affairs of that country. There are most important Indian and foreign affairs which are never discussed unless by some fortuitous chance some hon. Member is successful in the ballot or the matter is of such urgency that the adjournment of the House can be moved; otherwise these questions can only be dealt with by that exceedingly unsatisfactory method of questions and answers which are allowed in our proceedings every day. No one who has sat through the whole of this Debate can have done so without realising that the opinion of this House declared through the Debate is that the whole of our Parliamentary machinery has broken down and has become unworkable.
The only alternative is this system of devolutionary Home Rule. I regret very much the absence in this House at the present time of the present Governor-General of Australia (Sir Munro-Ferguson), who has contributed very valuable speeches in these Debates. I remember that he defined this question of devolutionary Home Rule as an establishment in which each unit had a central authority around which could be grouped the local authorities, and I accept that as an exceedingly good definition of devolutionary Home Rule. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Scottish Universities seemed to think that all that was necessary was to devolve certain extra powers upon the local authorities, but I entirely disagree with him. Those local authorities are already entrusted with largo powers under the measures which are being passed through this House, and I
think we ought to establish a central authority consisting of each of the units of the United Kingdom, in order to have a greater speeding up of the work of the local authorities who have to administer the great measures which you are passing through Parliament at the present time. We have to disentangle the management of Imperial affairs from those which are of a purely local character, and it is the disentangling process which this Committee will have to decide.
I want to say a word or two about the Irish aspect of the case which to me is by far the most important, I have always believed that it could be possible to find a solution of that knotty problem by means of devolution. As a Liberal I naturally desire, and desire urgently, to see this Irish question settled, and I welcome the very clear enunciation of the First Lord and the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of the General Election, but still more do I welcome the speech of the First Lord of the Admiralty this afternoon in which he declares himself strongly in favour of a federal solution by means of Home Rule all round. I am a strong supporter of the Coalition for the reason that the last Parliament, which was a Coalition Government, showed that it was possible to decide the most knotty questions which under the old party system would have created the greatest possible diversity of opinion and the strongest opposition. I believe that this Coalition Government can decide this old-standing controversy, too, if it sets its mind to it, and if a clear lead is given. Surely this Debate, which has shown the greatest possible unanimity of opinion, will prove to the Government that it is necessary, on this question of Ireland, to take a strong line and to give us a strong and clear lead, to which it is obvious the vast majority of Members of this House at the present time would give their very cordial support. I thought I noticed in the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Ripon (Major E. Wood), who moved this Resolution, a reference to the present condition of Ireland, and to the fact that it was necessary to do something, as it were, to pacify Ireland at the present time before we could proceed to the larger question of dealing with devolutionary Home Rule. I rather regret that anything of that kind should have been brought into this Debate although I may have misunderstood the hon. and gallant Member. He did, however, say something about the present condition of Ireland, and the apparent animosity which
was supposed to exist between Ireland and this country. Frankly, I have always hoped and believed that that animosity was a purely political one; fictitious, as it were. One can only speak from one's own experience; and from certainly my experience, when I came across, as I frequently did, Irish units in various theatres of war—I was attached to one for a very considerable time—I was forced to come to the conclusion that those men belonging to the Irish community were just as much heart and soul in favour of the Empire and the cause it represented as I was or anyone else.
Everyone realises and recognises with gratitude the efforts made at the commencement of the War by the Irish Nationalist Members of Parliament to raise troops; efforts which were in a very large measure crowned with success. I am speaking, of course, only of the South of Ireland, because it is the condition of affairs in the South of Ireland which is engaging attention at the present time. There is no need to refer to Ulster, whose action is recognised by all with the greatest gratitude. Whatever may be said about the Sinn Fein policy—and I am not going to defend it—those who came across individual Sinn Feiners in the various theatres of war were forced to come to the conclusion that the Sinn Feiner, individually, harboured no particular hostility to an Englishman or a Scotsman. I remember one doctor, who was attached to a unit in my charge at one time, who was a very ardent and keen Sinn Feiner, and who made no attempt to disguise his opinion, yet everyone in that unit, whether English or Scotch, drank his physic with the greatest possible confidence. I have met other Sinn Feiners in the various duties I have had to carry out, and whatever their private opinions may have been on England or Englishmen, I always found that those opinions were relegated to the background as long as there were any Germans to be dealt with. I believe that this animosity is largely political and fictitious, and possibly the Committee which, I hope, will be set up as a result of this Debate may find a solution of the trouble, may cause the unrest to settle down, and may settle the question once for all. There was a very famous statesman and orator, who, I think, few Members except, perhaps, the First Lord of the Admiralty, can remember personally—Mr. Joseph Cowen. For many years he represented Newcastle in this House, and he happened
to live all his life in that division of the county of Durham which I have the honour to represent. Speaking in a Home Rule Debate, he said:
It is not a gift, but a state of feeling, an attitude of mind that is required in order to draw the two peoples together.
That speech was made in this House thirty years ago, and surely to-day, after thirty years, and after this great War, it may be possible for us all to adopt that attitude of mind.

Captain ORMSBY-GORE: I have listended to a great part of this Debate with most profound satisfaction, because in it has been found the first fruition of work with which I was associated in 1914, when the discussion of constitutional questions looked blackest and most difficult. The right hon. Gentleman on the Front Opposition Bench (Mr. M. Macdonald), who seconded the Motion this afternoon, led small band of people who were anxious to look at our constitutional problems in the United Kingdom from the broadest possible standpoint and not to confine themselves to the terrible and sad trouble which the Irish question had got into owing, if I may say so, to the mishandling of a series of Parliaments. I want to recall to the House that we are debating here and now a question of vital urgency, because Parliamentary government is being questioned where Parliamentary government has never been questioned before. Unless we can ensure the proper working of Parliamentary government in these Islands, the brightest and the best creation of British genius, namely, Parliamentary government, may go down before the pressure of modern conditions in the new world. To my mind, it is vital, if we arc to retain the confidence of the peoples of the world in Parliamentary government, that this ancient Mother of Parliaments shall go forward with courage at this moment and release from its control, not absolutely, but at any rate in practice, a large amount of the control of administration and a large amount of the legislative functions which it has hitherto performed. The hon. Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir H. Craik) said this afternoon that before he could support a Motion of this kind he wanted to see a scheme for an Imperial Parliament thought out and produced. He was profoundly wrong in suggesting that course of action. We shall never be an Imperial Parliament until we cease to be a gas and water Parliament.
Until we have got rid of gas and water we are never going to get proper consideration of the big questions which this Parliament ought to deal with.
What I want to call the attention of the House to in particular is what we are doing and that we propose to do on Thursday next in regard to India. On that day we are going to consider a Bill which will establish responsible local government in eight provinces in India. We are going to devolve from the highly centralised bureaucracy two subordinate legislatures in India, and we are going to give to those subordinate legislatures considerable power over all local questions. If we are going to do that for India, must we not also do it for ourselves? We have had in connection with these reforms a most valuable document, the Report of the Feetham Committee, known as the Functions Committee, which went into the various functions of government hitherto performed by the Government of India, and classified those subjects which must be retained by the Central Government and those which could be handed over to the subordinate legislatures. What we are asking here to-day is that a similar Committee for the United Kingdom should be set up, and I hope when we have such a Committee we shall not hesitate to insist that the Government take up the Report of that Committee and to proceed as they are proceeding in the case of India, to put it into practice in this country. I am perfectly certain it is essential to the future Parliamentary control of our Ministries which are responsible for the growing interest Government action is taking in the daily lives of the people. If we are to retain Parliamentary control in that way, we cannot do it in this House, overburdened as it is with work.
I do not wish to go back too much into history, but I want to remind the House that this Parliament as we know it to-day is the result of three separate Acts of Union. The first in the reign of Henry VIII. was the Union with Wales, and that union was made complete—that is to say, the executive and the legislative powers in regard to Wales were all contemplated in this House. In the reign of Queen Anne the Act of Union was passed with Scotland. There the legislative union was carried out, but the executive union remained very largely separate as it is today. And last of all we had the Union with Ireland, and there even more than in the case of Scotland the executive
remains entirely separate from the executive of Great Britain and certainly from the Executive of England and Wales. The consequence is that you have not got even now a complete Act of Union. You have a Board of Agriculture, a Board of Education, and a Local Government Board for England and Wales. Scotland and Ireland each have their own separate Board of Agriculture, Board for Local Government, and Board for Education, and we see the result in the legislation which is introduced into this House. Take, for instance, the Housing Bill. The Government came down with a policy with regard to housing which they placed before the electors of the United Kingdom. To give effect to their policy what did they do? They did not introduce; one Bill and pass it through this House, but they introduced three Bills, one for England and Wales, another for Scotland, and another for Ireland. They sent them to three different Grand committees, and the Members who had amended the English Bill upstairs did not serve on either the Irish or Scottish Committees, and the consequence is yon get all the disadvantages of union and none of the advantages. I am perfectly certain that on a question like housing you can never properly tackle it until you deal with it in regard to Scotland by Scottish Members, in regard to Wales by Welsh Members, in regard to England by English Members, and in regard to Ireland by Irish Members. We can at once, I believe, devolve these functions, which are already separate in regard to their executive [...], to subordinate legislatures.
In this matter there is an increasing demand, and an increasingly just demand, on the part of the Welsh people that they should have control over their own education and over the things which most intimately concern their national life. They are not separatists in any way, but they feel that in regard to education they have a distinctive contribution to give to British civilisation, and can best give it by realising that Welsh education is essentially a matter for Welshmen. I may say I am both a natural-born devolutionist and a natural-born Unionist, because I am partly Welsh, partly Irish, partly Scottish and partly English. There fore I have a fellow feeling with the feelings of each section of the United Kingdom, and at the same time I am perfectly confident that, while recognising these feelings, you will not in any way diminish the pride we all have in the joint heritage of the British
Empire. In fact, I always say that we could never have had a British Empire had it not been for the different traditions, the different races, and the different sentiments co-operating together as part of a diversified civilisation in this country. I think that any practical statesman has to recognise that the problem of to-day is to harmonise local sentiment, local patriotic sentiment—very often racial sentiment—with the absolute necessity for every race and every nation worthy of the name to realise that it cannot be purely selfish. That is why I deplore the rise of Sinn Fein in Ireland—whether it takes the form of a purely Ulster Orange conscience or whether it takes the form of extreme Irish independence in the South of Ireland. We know the message has to go forth to all the nations of the world that we all have common duties one towards the other, and one of the things which makes me a convinced Unionist, while i am a devolutionist, is my belief that it would be absolutely impossible to give any form of Home Rule to Ireland or to any part of the United Kingdom which hands over to a separate Parliament labour legislation, factory legislation, and the like. I opposed the Home Rule Bill very largely because of that. You cannot say you will insist on so many hours being worked and such-and-such a minimum wage and such-and-such conditions of labour in England and allow quite different ones in Ireland. You cannot have a Labour Convention with your Allies and with the League of Nations if you are going to allow Ireland to legislate a lower standard than is maintained in this country, and it is absolutely vital that we should retain for the central United Kingdom Parliament the control of factory and labour legislation. I would say that to any Nationalist who is anxious to press his claims on sentimental grounds. Face practical realities, and there you will find that in a large number of subjects to-day the union must be maintained whilst at the same time your legitimate desire for a greater control over your local affairs can be realised.
I should like to say a word or two about the procedure of this House. I have been on two Standing Committees at once and had to choose which I would attend, while at the same time I have been on an important Government Committee at the India Office examining the India Bill and doing what I could to prepare for the Indian Constitutional Reforms. It is utterly impossible to carry on government in that
way, and it is utterly impossible to expect Members of Parliament to work fourteen hours a day and do decent work. We cannot do it. That is what the Government is asking us to do to-day. The present procedure of this House is absolutely ruining this House. It is ruining debates on the floor of the House. It means that a large amount of legislation is going upstairs, and instead of being within the knowledge of Members of Parliament and of the people of this country it is done by twenty or thirty Members in a Committee Boom. It does not matter how many OFFICIAL REPORTS we have; it is not the same thing and it never will be. Then I come to the greatest farce of all, the attempt of this House by means of an Estimates Committee to get some control over financial expenditure. With the pressure of legislation upon us, as we now know it—and it is going to be just as much in future years as it is this year—it is utterly impossible for this House to devote itself to one of its principal duties, namely safeguarding the interests of the taxpayer from extravagant expenditure by the bureaucracy. We can never do that by means of an Estimates Committee. We can only do it on the floor of the House, and we can only do it on the floor of the House if we have more time for detailed consideration of the Estimates. The Estimates Committee that we have set up is an absolute farce. The only thing we have done after many weary sittings is to reduce the expenditure upon the Lord Chancellor's bath. That is the single triumph of the new Rules of Procedure. If we are going to restore Parliamentary control over expenditure, we have to set up subordinate legislatures to help us to do it.
I do not wish in any way to minimise the difficulty of setting up what I frankly admit is a new Constitution for the United Kingdom. In the first place, my idea of devolution is that you should retain the present House of Commons precisely as it is to-day. No change is needed in its numbers, its personnel, its methods of election, or its representation. But the mere fact that you set up, in addition to the present House of Commons, four or even more subordinate legislatures will relieve you of all the local legislation. It will relieve you of all the private Bills, of practically all the local government work, of the agricultural work, of education, and of public work on many other subjects, because, although you re-
tain the right of this Parliament to legislate on all and any subjects, the mere fact that you have subordinate legislatures, with Ministers responsible for them, with power to legislate in certain particulars, will make this House very shy of dealing with those questions, just as in the case of the Dominions we still retain the power to legislate, but we do not exercise that power, because we have devolved, in practice, the legislative and executive functions in regard to those Dominions to other Legislatures. In the United Kingdom I am perfectly certain it will be possible to make a division of functions as is being made in the Government of India Bill under the Report of the Feetham Committee without the necessity of any supreme Court or any Court of law. In the Government of India Bill there is no supreme Court and no Court of law. No Act of Indian legislature can be questioned by any Court of law, and provision is made in the Bill for the power and the right of a subordinate legislature to take a particular course by executive act, and that is perfectly simple and the right way to do it, and in spirit the way in which our Constitution has grown. I am not deterred by that. The real difficulty—I do not wish to shirk the difficulty—is the problem of finance, and that will be the most important function which the Committee of Inquiry which we seek to set up will have to face. I have always taken the view that if you devolve some of the functions of Government upon subordinate legislature you must give them fiscal freedom within the items of revenue over which they have control. I am sure we shall require, if we have this scheme of devolution, to retain certain sources of revenue, such as Death Duties, Customs, and the like, to the central Parliament to defray the central expenses of maintaining the armed forces of the Crown, all the commercial expenditure and the expenses which are obviously central expenses, and we must at the same time give latitude and full freedom in regard to other heads of revenue to the subordinate legislature. That is the problem for the Committee. Those who have been working at the subject of devolution for some time past have been prepared to face this question and there is already in this House a large body of informed opinion upon this subject which is prepared to go before the Committee which the Government, I hope, will set up, and submit views as to how devolution can be carried out.
10.0 P.M.
I hope hon. Members will not be deterred from going forward with this policy by fear of the Irish question. Do not let Ireland and the acute problem of Ireland which we have to face deter our minds from the necessity of producing a scheme for the United Kingdom and for Great Britain in particular. I have always understood in regard to Ireland that the right hon. Member for the Duncairn Division (Sir E. Carson) based his strongest opposition to the Home Rule Bill on the fundamental principle that it would deprive him and those who think with him of their British citizenship. He said, "You are depriving me of my equal share with Welshmen, Scotsmen, or Englishmen in the affairs of the United Kingdom, and in the affairs of the Imperial Parliament. Under a system of devolution that position can no longer be held against Home Rule, because we are not depriving anyone of British citizenship. All alike will be equal. All would have an equal share in Imperial and central matters, and an equal share in local matters. Therefore the ground of that opposition goes by the board.
I say this further about the Irish question. I would be the last person to prejudice in any way a solution of that question by the possible division of Ireland, although I should regret it profoundly. The Irish part of me comes from the South and West of Ireland, and I should profoundly regret to see the people of North-East Ulster abandon the people who have been with them in the past, when an Irish Parliament was established I want them to come in and help those of us in the South and West who do not see eye to eye with the majority of our neighbours. I want them to come in and ensure, as they can ensure, that we get fair play. I am perfectly certain that that is an appeal which ought to be made to them more often. I do not rule out the question of a possible division of Ireland, because there are appeals made nowadays on this question of Ireland about self-determination. If self-determination means anything it means the division of Ireland. I regret it, but self-determination, if it is self-determination for Dublin, is also self-determination for Belfast. You cannot solve the Irish question merely on lines of self-determination. You have to take economic and other questions into consideration, and it is only through some system of devolution, it is only through
an all-round scheme, that there is any ray of hope among the dark clouds which over-shadow the problem of Ireland today. Probably Irishmen will unite in rejecting devolution when they first hear of it, but when they see a concrete scheme in being, when they see a local legislature being set up in Edinburgh and Cardiff—and if the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Mackinder) has his way, in York and Winchester as well—and they see something ready to hand, you will get a very remarkable revulsion of feeling. You will get a large number of people in Ireland who will say, "At least this is something. Let us see if we can work it." You will get a party in Ireland who will realise, as I think very many Irishmen are beginning to realise, that the rule of Mr. De Valera—I suppose I ought to refer to him as the hon. Member for one or other of the many divisions he represents—is not likely to be any great benefit to them either from the point of view of their economic prosperity or of their moral progress.
So I do urge this House not to shrink from the difficulty but to go forward boldly and insist that the Government should take this up as their policy and make the British Constitution stronger and firmer and one which is elastic and on which we can build for the future. One of the things to which I attach most importance is that when we have got rid of the gas and water and the local affairs which take up so much of our time, we shall be able then to call our Dominions together and say, "We are now in a more fit state to be called an Imperial Parliament. Come and let us discuss together the future development of an Imperial constitution upon a basis whereby the local affairs of each part of the United Kingdom are subordinate, and the central affairs of the United Kingdom as a unit are arranged for, and now we must build on top of that an Imperial constitution where the Sovereign Governments can be federated." That is the difference between devolution and federation. We are asking for devolution now in order that we may federate in a few years time. That is my earnest hope. Another thing; when we have got rid of the gas and water, and the greater Birmingham Bill, the Belfast Education Bill, and all these Bills are given over to-local legislatures, then I feel certain that the questions of Egypt, India, our foreign relations, our trade, our labour legislation, and the common affairs of the United Kingdom will have
proper attention by this House. The country at present is bewildered by Parliament one day dealing with the minutiae of the development of a particular corner of the United Kingdom, while next day we are discussing expeditions to Russia, and things like that. As long as this goes on, it is no wonder that the House is losing the confidence of the country. Devolution is a necessity if we are to save Parliamentary institutions in this country, and I hope that we shall have no Division, but that we shall unanimously press upon the Government the necessity of dealing with this question here and now, and going forward with no uncertain step.

Mr. KIDD: Despite the eloquence expended in support of this Resolution, I think that I shall be expressing the feelings of a large number of my colleagues when I say that attempting to discover what devolutionists are really after is about as hard a job as trying to catch a will-o-the-wisp in Scotland. We have heard a great deal against the present Parliamentary system, and we have heard—largely, I think, from new Members—no end of suggestions for the manufacture of fresh institutions. I submit that this House is not a manufactured article. It is a growth, and a growth which I think still commands the respect of the nations forming the United Kingdom. Those who support this Resolution ought to be able to show in what the advantages of this scheme consist to compensate for the disadvantages which we say attend it, and I would ask the House to agree with me that we must first rid the ground of the tendency towards the confusion of administrative and legislative work. One can understand schemes which propose to subdivide the administrative work of one of our Government Departments in. the interests of economy and expedition. We have a sample of that in our Private Bill Procedure Act in Scotland. Under that measure we can in Scotland, without taking the trouble of coming here, with the expense and the delay involved, pass any private. Bill which we care, unless, as often happens, a corporation or other body applied to have the Bill taken upstairs here because it wanted a wider atmosphere.
I have had occasion to discuss Home Rule in three elections in Scotland, and I wish to repudiate very emphatically the suggestion that there is any desire for Home Rule on the part of the intelligent
majority of the people of Scotland. When you are asked about Home Rule in Scotland the point is put to you thus: Is it right that with regard to the purchase of, say, gasworks or waterworks we should be put to the expense of going to London? Once you advise your interrogator that he does not require to go to London, and that he can carry it through under the Private Bill Procedure Act, he apologises for his question, he explains that that is all he wants, and that that is what he means by Home Rule. I say that if the Debate has served no other purpose than to advertise more the existence of the Private Bill Procedure Act then it has served a very excellent purpose. To go further than that, I take it, is the intention of the Resolution. They do not have in view the sub-division of administrative work, but they have in view, as their Resolution states, the establishment of subordinate legislatures. What does that mean? It can mean only one of two things—the duplication of law at enormously increased cost or the creation of a system which can tend only towards the old diversity of law, and this inevitably means ultimately a conflict of law.
I am rather surprised at the want of courage of the Resolutionists. They fight shy of the ultimate results of their own action. As proof of the confusion of ideas existing, I heard to-night from an hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite that federation and devolution are one and the same thing arrived at by two different roads. I would ask him to remember this, that federation expresses a natural law, and that devolution is surely a breach of natural law. Again, I heard from this side of the House that just as they are decentralising the work of India, so they would propose by this Resolution to deal with the work of this Parliament. Think of that as an argument! In India we have been pursuing a government—rightly in my opinion—by the necessarily autocratic methods of a ruling Power. We are seeking to substitute for those methods some semblance of democratic government. We have not altered the government of India in the matter of degree, but in the matter of kind. What it is proposed to do in this Resolution is further to democratise the democratic institutions of our own country. Therefore I say there can be no comparison between the two things. I mention this only to show, as I hope I can conclusively, the extraordinary confusion of ideas that
exists on this constitutional question. I submit that no case whatever has been made out by the Resolutionists for setting up these subordinate legislatures- I am rather surprised to hear Grand Committees damned so wholesomely. The supporters of the Resolution are very lucky in having a very colourless Resolution. Nobody can tell what they mean, and that is the best part of their case. It is all very well for the Resolutionists to attack an institution which has run successfully throughout the centuries, and to hold up a kind of dream thing which these young and budding Parliamentarians assure us is to be so very superior to that which we have hitherto enjoyed.
I think that would hardly be worthy of the English race, and it is scarcely to be expected that Scottish Members could accept such a well-intentioned scheme. I submit no case whatever has been made out against this great Mother of Parliaments. A case has been urged against the Grand Committee system. In the old days Home Rulers in Scotland were described by a very distinguished and facetious Scotsman as representing the odds and ends of the country, and they usually gave as an explanation for their demand that Scottish business could not get through here. Then we set up Grand Committees, and what is the complaint now? We are told that business is going through too quickly. I shall probably be told, "You cannot be in Grand Committee and in the House," but that is really a matter of the adjustment of hours. We are running but of work on the Scottish Committee, and that surely gives us time, if the hours are properly adjusted, to give all the attention we ought to give to this House. Therefore, I submit, so far as my experience goes, and I think I shall be endorsed in this remark by many other Scotsmen, that the Grand Committee system is working most satisfactorily. I have been reminded to-day of the Colonial analogy. Am I wrong in saying that the position of these Parliamentary institutions is the very best justification for leaving our Parliament undisturbed? Our Colonies are pursuing precisely the same line of development in their Parliamentary institutions as we have done here. The local Parliament has been superseded by the Dominion Parliament. I heard an hon. Friend opposite deplore the fact that the Dominion Parliament was sapping more and more the powers of the local Parliament.

Brigadier-General COCKERILL: I did not deplore it, but stated it to be the fact.

Mr. KIDD: The Dominion Parliament is doing that in obedience to a natural law, and it is an excellent reason why we who have travelled the road of unity should not turn back. I say that Colonial development is following precisely the same lines as the old land has done. We are further ahead and that is only one way of saying that the mother is older than the child. It would be a retrograde step on our part to again break up the Union Parliament into several Parliaments. The next fallacy urged is that of the small nation. The hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Mackinder) was particularly anxious as a good Unionist to plead that these subordinate Parliaments should not be established on a national basis. I forget how many Parliaments he was going to have. I know that Ireland was to have two, and Scotland at least one, and England was to have many, until an English Member stepped forth to object, and rightly object, to the division of England. One section of Irishmen take exception to Ireland being mentioned in the Resolution at all, and another section of Irishmen, to show their profound regard of this big effort, stay out of the House altogether. Not one of the Nationalists has appeared in this House during the Debate. I only want to show how little impression has been made upon Irishmen, and but for the Irish case you would have heard nothing about devolution. Ireland's demand for Home Rule may be right or wrong, but you will never satisfy that demand by giving them this mixture of gas and water; and if we are to be tortured for Ireland, that is no reason why we should proceed to torture Scotland, and as a Scotsman I take the strongest possible exception to any disturbance of the present condition of unity. I will tell you why. You cannot create these subordinate Parliaments without creating a conflict of law. That means that you place obstacle after obstacle in the way of commerce, in Scotland, at the present time, where we are expending large sums on education, the humblest boy is educated till he is fifteen and later has to go to continuation classes until he is eighteen. Are you going to restrict that boy's opportunity, are you going to abridge his platform, by putting up these obstacles to commerce? I am surprised that Labour Members support devolution, having in view the sacrifices
made by Scottish workers to give their sons an education. I know that we have so-called free education, but the Leader of the Labour party knows that it is a distinct misnomer, and he knows the sacrifices represented by the worker having to maintain his child at school. That boy at the finish has health, education, and the widest possible opportunity, and I say with conviction that the man who supports the establishment in Scotland of a separate Parliament is, consciously or unconsciously, restricting the opportunities of the worker's child. On that ground if on no other I would oppose this Resolution.
Another point urged was this, and it is one to which I gave the most marked attention. It is said that if we relieve this Parliament of Scottish business, English, Irish, and Welsh business, we shall make this Parliament more representative of the Empire. Did I think so, I should hesitate, despite the reasons I have already urged, to oppose this Resolution; but we should not do anything of the kind. You may evacuate from this Parliament all these local powers, all this English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish business, and this Parliament will remain no more representative of Empire then than it is now. Your difficulty is a geographical difficulty, and I submit this thought for the consideration of Members, that in a House of Parliament elected solely by the electors of the "United Kingdom it is unwise to dwell too often or too long on matters particularly affecting your Dominions. If you had this Parliament freed of all these other duties, if you set this Parliament down to discuss nothing but Dominion affairs, then your Parliament, constituted as it is, would not in its work promote a greater cordiality with our great Dominions overseas. Your Dominions know that you cannot touch their business unduly, and, so long as this Parliament is constituted as it is, they do not wish you to interfere in their concerns unduly. On this topic we ought to remember what we sometimes forget, that democracy, like industry, is, after all, still very young, and not a little of our trouble is oftentimes due to our not recognising this.
Your real Parliament of the Empire will come some day. It will be evolved by the political genius of our race when the conditions are ripe, when democracy is more mature, when democracy is less suspicious, and then, in a clear atmosphere,
you will discover your Empire Parliament, but not an Empire Parliament created on what you call a popular franchise. Your Empire Parliament can never come that way, and if you would have that day approach as quickly as possible, you dare not multiply Parliamentary institutions now. The more you multiply your Parliamentary institutions the more difficult do you make the realisation of this dream of a Parliament of Empire, because the more Parliamentary units you have to consult, in order to have the creation of that wider Parliament. That is, I submit, a thought that might be kept before this House. I am speaking as a Scotsman. I want to say I am qualified by a very full discussion on Home Rule by a strong industrial constituency in the centre of Scotland to state what I believe to be Scottish opinion on this subject. Speaking as a. Scotsman, I believe I can claim that my country has contributed no little to the strength of the Union. I can say she is very grateful for, and very conscious of, the strength she has secured from the Union,. Scotland has no need of a paper constitution. Her historical record is a fine proof of the great wisdom shown by these men in the past who made her take that tide which leads to unity. It is by taking that tide that Scotland has been so prosperous during the last 200 years, and now to-day, combining the soul of the clansman with the patriot's heart, it is the chief pride of her race to have dedicated both to the service of the Empire.

Major O'NEILL: My right hon. Friend the Member for the Duncairn Division (Sir E. Carson) stated in the course of his speech that, in his opinion, this subject was the most important question which had come up for consideration in the House of Commons since the last election. I entirely agree with that statement of the position, for we are discussing here not only a possible means of Tendering this House more efficient, but we are also considering, at any rate indirectly, the means of eventually bringing about some form of Imperial federation which will be, in the hope of many of us, a result which eventually will come about. In regard to this particular Motion, and speaking upon it as I do, as representing an Ulster Constituency, I could not help noticing a marked difference between the manner in which it was approached by my hon. Friend who moved it and my hon. Friend who seconded it. The Mover approached this question primarily from the
point of view of the necessity, which he considered to be a vital one, of delegating certain powers of this Parliament to subordinate Assemblies. He dealt equally and upon the same basis with Assemblies in different parts of the United Kingdom. The Seconder of the Motion, in the latter part of his speech at any rate, dealt not only with the matter from that point of view, but he went so far as to deal with it largely from the point of view of a possible Irish settlement. In regard to this he stated it as his opinion that Dominion Home Rule, while impossible of realisation at the present time, was not altogether inadmissible. He went further and said that he, at any rate, based his support of the Resolution on the fact that if you are to grant these subordinate Parliaments you must grant a Parliament to Ireland—the whole of that country, undivided and united.
That point of view is one which, I am glad to say, has not been substantiated or supported by other hon. Members. The First Lord of the Admiralty, who spoke for the Government, stated that he only approached this question in a spirit of great sympathy and support if, as a basis and a foundation of it, you admitted the possibility of dividing into subordinate Parliaments, quite irrespective of nationality, as it has been called, or whether you are dealing with England as a unit, or Scotland or Ireland, and of a division into, if necessary, much smaller units representing different interests in the various parts of the United Kingdom.
That aspect of the question was very ably dealt with in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for the Camlachie Division of Glasgow (Mr. Mackinder). I must say that I was in agreement with him when he said that you must deal with England—the great predominant partner, as it would be, in any scheme of Federal Devolution—not as one unit at all. He put forward what were to my mind most conclusive arguments in favour of dividing up England into different districts for the purpose of these subordinate Parliaments. If you admit that England may possibly be divided up into different Departments, you approach this question upon a basis, not of the Resolution as framed, that is to say a Parliament for England, a Parliament for Ireland, a Parliament for Scotland and possibly for Wales, but upon the basis that possibly there may be a number of smaller legis-
lative assemblies not based upon nationality but upon the representation of different districts or different interests in the whole of the United Kingdom. We hear upon all sides now that the Irish question has got to be settled. If I thought that it was possible to settle the Irish question upon any basis of justice or equity I should certainly be in favour of it. It is a question that has led to difficulties in this country for many years past, and if it were possible really to settle the Irish question in the sense of putting an end to all the troubles and difficulties which have been created in that country, I myself, and I feel certain that those who think with me, would be the last to oppose any solution which would settle that question upon really equitable terms to all the parties concerned. In regard to this particular Motion, so far as it affects the Irish question, there is at least this to be said for it, that the idea which underlies it approaches the question from a different point of view to that from which it has been approached by Parliament in the past. It suggests as a solution for the Irish question, in conjunction with the general question of the Government of the United Kingdom, equal terms for all portions of the United Kingdom. That is not what was suggested in the Home Rule Bill. That has never been suggested before in this House as a solution of the Irish question. I regard a suggested solution of the Irish question which is based upon the same treatment for Ireland as for the rest of the United Kingdom in a very different light from that in which I regard a settlement based either upon the old Home, Rule schemes or upon the modern, fantastic and impossible ideas of Dominion Home Rule.

Notice taken that forty Members were not present; House counted; and forty Members being found present—

Major O'NEILL: When the count took place I was saying that I regarded this particular suggestion or a solution of the Irish question rather differently from the other solutions which have in the past been put forward, on the ground that it does provide for equal treatment for the different parts of the United Kingdom. That is a principle for which we Ulster Members have consistently and constantly done our best to secure in this House. We say that what is good for the rest of the kingdom is good enough for us, and,
so far as a Resolution of this character would provide for different bodies in different parts of the United Kingdom not based upon national delimitation, and so far as the suggestion was applied equally to the United Kingdom as a whole I, for my part, should not be disposed to consider that it was by any means an impossible solution of the difficulties which face us. If you admit that, the absolutely necessary corollary is that in any Irish part of such a scheme Ulster would have to be a separate unit. The hon. Member for Stafford (Captain Ormsby-Gore) said that if you are going to solve the Irish question upon a basis of self-determination, that means and must always mean the division of that country into two different parts. I absolutely agree with that. We, in the North of Ireland, have always maintained and still do maintain that so far as we are concerned we are perfectly satisfied with the system of government which has served us so well in the past. Yet if, at the same time, you are going to introduce into the United Kingdom a different system of government by subordinate legislatures, then, although we do not ask for it, you must logically, equitably, and under any system of fairness, treat the two different parts of Ireland as two different units in the federal system of the United Kingdom. I do feel that that is a most vital and fundamental fact so far as Ireland is concerned in connection with this scheme which is proposed.
I think hon. Members must realise that the two different portions of Ireland, the Northern portion and the Southern and Western portions, are divided from each other by far larger and far more fundamental divisions than, for instance, Scotland is divided from England. There can be no question as to that. There is, of course, the great religious difference; there are differences with regard to all kinds of questions which we should like to see dealt with in quite a different way from what they would be dealt with by any Assembly which controlled the whole of Ireland. Take the education question, for instance. Upon the education question we should like to see much more popular control. Owing to religious differences and difficulties people from the other parts of Ireland do not like popular
control. With regard to the licensing question, and with regard to the control of liquor traffic, we in the North of Ireland take quite a different view from that which is taken in the other parts of the country. We in the North of Ireland are in quite a different position from the rest of the country as regards the finance of the housing question. Our rates are not so great. It will be much easier to raise money for housing than it will be in other parts of the country. Take the question of local government. In many questions which affect the lives of our people every day and every week of the year there are fundamental differences between those who live in the North of Ireland and those who live in the other parts of the country.
I think it is now almost universally admitted that in any form of change that is to come about—whether by devolution or federalism or any other system, the only way in which you can equitably provide for an Irish settlement is by treating the two different parts of the country as two different units in the Federal system. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Duncairn stated that in his opinion devolution would not lead to separation. In so far as devolution would be an all-round system, I absolutely agree with him. If you have devolution by creating different Parliaments for all the different districts in the United Kingdom, treating all alike, I do not think it would lead to separation or have any tendency towards separation. There was a time when devolution, as it was called, was suggested as a solution of the Irish question. That was many years ago, when Mr. Wyndham was Chief Secretary. In those days the Irish Unionists, and none more vehemently than my right hon. Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Long), opposed devolution for Ireland with all the power at their command. Why was that so? We opposed evolution for Ireland in the days when Mr. Wyndham was Chief Secretary, first of all because it was a solution which was suggested for Ireland only, and there was no question of its being applied to any other parts of the United Kingdom. Therefore it was not on the same basis as the present proposal. Secondly, we opposed it because there was no suggestion of any separate treatment for the two different parts of Ireland which are in essence so [...]erent.
Therefore now, although devolution in the limited sense was, I think, absolutely impossible and unsuitable as a solution of the Irish difficulty or of the difficulty of congested business in this House, I do feel, as the right hon. Member for the Duncairn Division said earlier in this Debate, that if it is to be examined by a Committee or Commission of this House, or of the two Houses, whichever it may be, it must be largely regarded in the light of events which have taken place since 1904 and 1905, when it was proposed only as a solution of the Irish question. And, of course, one cannot help feeling the difficulty of the congestion of business in this House, one cannot help feeling as a Member of this great Empire, that some new system of government of the Empire has got to come sooner or later. If this suggestion is in any way going to help the better, more efficient, and more united government of the Empire, at any rate it is worth some consideration. I most sincerely and honestly feel that this War has been worth winning if, as the result of it, and of the sacrifices which we and our fellow kinsmen in different parts of the Empire have made in it, some better system of government for this Empire can be evolved. I think that this Motion, although as it is worded I could not possibly vote for it, if it is going to help in the future government of the Empire upon lines which will enable the component parts of our Empire to be united in the general administration of the Empire, deserves most careful consideration, and this, I take it, the Government are prepared to give it. If that consideration is given to it I could not possibly support the recommendations which it might involve unless they dealt with the Irish part, which is, after all, one of the most important parts of this question, in such a way as to treat the two parts of the country as entirely separate and different units in this federal scheme. But even though I say that, I feel that, representing the North of Ireland, we are perfectly satisfied with the system under which we have hitherto been governed. This Motion, supported as far as it was by my right hon. Friend (Sir E. Carson), also has my support on its main principles so far as it is entirely confined within the limits which I have mentioned.

Motion made, and Question "That the Debate be now adjourned" (Mr. G. Thorne), put, and agreed to.

Debate to be resumed To-morrow.

Orders of the Day — WAYS AND MEANS [2nd June.]

Resolutions reported,

Orders of the Day — WAR LOAN.

That the Treasury may—

(1) borrow, in such manner as they think fit, on the security of the Consolidated Fund (in addition to any other sums which they are en titled to borrow)—

(a)any sums required for raising the Supply granted to His Majesty for the service of the year ending the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and twenty, up to an amount not exceeding two hundred and fifty million pounds; and
(b)any sums required for repayment of any maturing securities issued under the War Loan Act 3, 1914 to 1918, or of any Treasury Bills or of any Ways and Means advances; and

(2)create securities to be issued to the holders of any securities issued under those Acts, in exchange for those securities; and

(3)in connection with any borrowing or creation of securities in pursuance of this Resolution—

(a) charge on the Consolidated Fund the principal and interest of any securities created in pursuance of this Resolution and any expenses incurred in respect of any such borrowing or exchange of securities; and
(b) charge on the Consolidated Fund such sums as may be required for the purposes of any sinking funds established for the redemption of securities created in pursuance of this Resolution; and
(c) charge on the Consolidated Fund any additional remuneration to the Bank of England or the Bank of Ireland in respect of any sums raised or securities created in pursuance of this Resolution.

Orders of the Day — WAR SAVINGS CERTIFICATES EXTENSION.

2. That the Treasury may arrange for giving an option to the holders of any War Saving Certificates to extend the currency of those securities.

Resolutions agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in upon the said Resolutions by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Chairman of Ways and Means, and Mr. Baldwin.

Orders of the Day — WAR LOAN BILL,—

"To make further provision for raising money for the present War and for pur-
poses in connection therewith, to authorise the extension in certain cases of War Saving Certificates, and to make further provision in relation to Government securities," presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 105.]

Orders of the Day — SELECT COMMITTEES (SITTINGS).

Ordered, "That the Select Committee on Pensions and the Select Committee
on Transport (Metropolitan area) have leave to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House."—[Colonel Stanley.]

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

Motion made, and Question "That this House do now adjourn," put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Five minutes after Eleven o'clock.